


And the Abyss Looked Back

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 22:29:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4076152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor Kaidan Alenko has one job- to track down humanity’s first biotic hero and bring him safely back to Grissom Academy. What he doesn’t expect is a rollercoaster that leads him to the forgotten corners of the galaxy with an unstable vanguard, a stolen frigate, and an enemy that none of them can comprehend. And what he discovers changes everything he’s ever known.</p><p>MASS EFFECT BIG BANG 2015</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Abyss Looked Back

**Author's Note:**

> Art by [Azzy](http://azzydarling.tumblr.com) (and best listened to with [Azzy's amazing soundtrack](http://azzydarling.tumblr.com/post/120729720048/playlist-art-for-joasakuras-story-and-the)).
> 
> Beta'ed by [Gwyllgi](http://y-gwyllgi-unig.tumblr.com)  
> 

  
  
**Author:[joasakura](http://joasakura.tumblr.com)  Artist: [azzy](http://azzydarling.tumblr.com)  Beta: [gwyllgi](http://y-gwyllgi-unig.tumblr.com)  
  
** **PROLOGUE: 2176, PETRA NEBULA/VETUS SYSTEM.  
  
Alliance Carrier SSV Lamarr, in geostationary orbit high above the "alpine paradise" of Elysium, her shuttles loaded with marines eager for shore leave.**  
  
Shepard tugged at the collar of his uniform as the cramped shuttle idled, waiting for approach vectors through the crowded sky. It was hot with all the bodies strapped in, too close for a vanguard's sensibilities—his skin itched and he wanted to run. Instead he scowled at the romance novel displayed on his omnitool, trying to force the words into focus by sheer will.  
  
It wasn't enough.  
  
The shuttle's tiny drive core was in need of maintenance and it rasped against his biotics like the whispers of the other marines in his particular tin can. He was the lone biotic in the 57th. The test case. The freak. They didn't like the officer's bars on his suit, believing them undeserved except for some trick of genetics. They didn't trust the wild dance of power he displayed on the battlefield. He ate alone. He fought alone. A certain natural reticence probably didn't help matters either, he thought glumly.  
  
He never thought he'd miss his training regiment, but there you had it.  
  
"Hey, LT," the marine (Private Ramirez, Alex; born on a colony Shepard couldn't pronounce, tripping over the syllables like a drunk krogan) across the aisle called to him, and Shepard stiffened. "You gonna pick up an asari down there?"  
  
He glanced up from his book, searching their faces for intent. "Uh, probably not." The smile he pasted on his lips felt awkward and unnatural but he tried to force it into shape. "I..."  
  
"Cause I heard they can do things with their biotics, get a body all riled up," another added. Private Walters, Caitlin, he thought. He knew all of them, believed a good officer should know his people, but they weren't his people any more than he was theirs. The group's collective stare made him flinch. He knew he outranked them, knew he should call them on their insubordination, but…  
  
But.  
  
His orders when he'd been deployed to the Lamarr had been painfully clear. Be "good". Show them you're not a monster, not an animal. Play nice. It had sounded easier when he'd been bright eyed and fresh-faced with his training regiment. Here, with the off-key hum of the shuttle's drive core scraping over his nerves and the gravity shift dropping his stomach through the floor, it sounded like the bullshit he'd always unconsciously known it was.  
  
"I heard vanguards are, like, always riled up." Ramirez laughed, and the oily curl of it settled sick in Shepard's already churning gut. He sat on it, chewing the bones of the private's words as he read the same phrase over and over on his screen.  
  
Lovers. No, Soulmates, reunited and passionately kissing and he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt someone's lips on his own.  
  
Finally, with the shuttle on the ground, he'd had enough of it all. He itched and he burned and he was so tired of the noise. As the crowds jostled them, Shepard clapped a hand on Ramirez's shoulder. The bigger man froze at that deceptively small hand on his arm, and looked down at the vanguard in shock as the power trembled across his skin. "Whatcha doing, LT?" He tried to sound casual, but his voice quavered.  
  
'Humans know their own,' Shepard thought bitterly, but his words were perfectly calm. "Sir," Shepard said, pale eyes catching the skittering blue of his biotics. "You will address me as 'sir'. Is that clear, private?"  
  
"Yeah, sir." Ramirez swallowed. "Sir, yessir."  
  
"Do you know what happens when I biotic charge, private?" Shepard's voice dropped and he stepped in close enough to smell the private's sweat, feeling the eyes of the others on him. His lips pulled into a thin, cruel smile. "My powers hook into my target's nervous system—we call it a biotic lock. I can hear the electricity dancing in their nerves, and I can find them anywhere after that. Just like I can find you. And if I ever hear you talking smack about me again—about any biotic again—you will know exactly what it feels like to be all..." Shepard paused. "What was it again, private?  
  
"Riled up, Sir. Yessir," Ramirez babbled as Shepard let him go. Shepard watched him stumble into his friends and retreat into the crowd.  
  
"What did you say to him?" an unfamiliar voice asked and Shepard wheeled. The speaker was thin and dark, a captain's bars on his shoulder. Shepard immediately straightened, hand snapping into a salute.  
  
"I used my biotics to cause a mild static charge on his skin, sir," Shepard said, looking over the man's shoulder at nothing. "As a means of convincing him to improve his disposition on certain matters, sir."  
  
"Because it sounded like you said you were going to biotic charge him." The captain said, eyes crinkling in amusement. "I'm Captain Anderson, SSV Hastings."  
  
"Lieutenant Shepard, sir, 57th Marines, SSV Lamarr, sir." Shepard eyed the captain, taking in his demeanour.  
  
"At ease, marine." Anderson smiled. "I'd heard the Lamarr was taking on a vanguard. It's a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant." He held out his hand, and chuckled when Shepard shook it awkwardly.  
  
"I'm sorry, sir. Most people don't actually want to touch me. I think they're afraid my... eezo nodules are contagious." Shepard shook his head ruefully.  
  
"I've discovered that for a species so big on exploration, we're terrible with change. Just be yourself, Lieutenant. It'll all fall into place after that." Anderson laughed, and for the first time since he'd taken his posting aboard the Lamarr, Shepard felt his shoulders unclench.  
  
"Thank you, sir." This time, the smile on Shepard's face felt like it might actually belong there. He paused then. "I don't recall hearing the Hastings was going to be this far out, though, sir."  
  
"It's not. I'm here on other business." Anderson replied pleasantly. "I'll be rejoining her at Arcturus." He offered his hand again. "I hope we cross paths again, son."  
  
This time, Shepard shook it gratefully. "Likewise sir, and... спасибо. Thank you."  
  
As he watched Anderson's retreating form, he couldn't help but think maybe this shore leave wouldn't be so bad after all.  
  
  
**~~~~  
  
  
PART 1: EXODUS CLUSTER/ASGARD  
  
1.  
On approach to Terra Nova. A lo-fi vid, metadata reading: 2178, even though outside that closed digital world, it's actually 2183.**  
  
"We just..." The burly marine onscreen looked distant for a moment, thick brows knotted. The voice in Kaidan Alenko's headphones as he hunched further into his seat sounded almost like a child's, at odds with the man it was coming from.  
  
The transport ship was crowded, full of marines on their way to the base, and he could feel their regard on the back of his neck. A civilian—or even worse, a potential civilian oversight officer—was taking up their air in the cramped metal box. He wondered if they could smell the ozone of biotics on his skin. He fiddled with the headphones and focused on the video and the gummy, vaguely fish-tasting supplement bar he was trying to eat without actually letting it touch his tongue.  
  
"Sergeant Ramirez?" an off-screen voice gently pushed. A woman, French. Doctor Chloe Michel, according to the notes in his hand. "Alex?"  
  
"Private, ma'am," the man said in a lost voice. "Private Alexander Ramirez. Serial number—"  
  
"You don't have to, Sergeant," Doctor Michel said kindly. "Remember, you were all given promotions for your heroism. Is Alex better?"  
  
"Yes, ma'am. Alex is fine." Ramirez looked at her for a moment, then away. "The Lamarr had come to low orbit when she blew. We could see it, like fireworks, right before the slaver fleet came down." The marine shook his head, still looking in the distance, at something two years old and still fresh as the moment. "For all the shit we gave Lieutenant Shepard, he never panicked. Got me activating the AA guns, and shit, they hadn't been used since the damn place had been built. Next thing I know, he's got Walters organising the local guard to booby trap all the choke points on the ground, and Smith and Ng getting as many civilians as they can out to the original colony storage facility in the mountains. Some folks got scared, tried to escape in shuttles, and they were just getting shot down right and left."  
  
"And then what happened, Alex?" Doctor Michel's voice was gentle again as the drone camera focused on the Marine's sweating brow.  
  
"Too many of them. So many enemies, and we were just trying to hold on until reinforcements came. We knew the Lamarr had to have gotten off a mayday, and the Agincourt was supposed to be joining us at Elysium, so, just trying to hold on, y'know? But we were running out of bullets and shit to jury rig. So, Shepard tells me to fall back with the others. He smiles..." The marine touched his own face. "I'd been such an asshole to him. And he just smiles at me and says 'Get to safety. I'm gonna cut loose, give 'em a real target.' I'd... I'd seen him fight before. But under real tight circumstances, y'know?"  
  
"I don't know, Alex. Please explain." Michel's hand briefly entered the screen to touch the big man's arm.  
  
The marine raked his hand through close-copped hair and hugged himself. "Alliance was all hot to get biotics in the field, but no one trusted them. Hell, none of us wanted to fight alongside him, that was for sure. We all thought it was unnatural, y'know? You hear... stories, of how they're all fucked up. Vanguards especially. I mean, who does that to themselves? Yeah, so Shepard needed command permission to use his powers every single time. And now? He just lets loose, drawing them all to the spaceport." Ramirez's face softened at the memory. "It was beautiful. Like a thunderstorm hit the ground. One second, he's charging, then next there's a boom and a flash and twenty batarians go flying. And then again, and again. A hurricane, lightning and thunder and..."  
  
"So you disobeyed orders and stayed."  
  
"I felt like someone should stay, y'know? To be there for him. And it went on for hours. Most of them were trying to get him, so I started going after the ones still coming after the colonists. I caught sight of Shepard, y'know? Right before the bastards dropped that groundbuster on him. He was covered in blood and soot and he was glowing. And he looked so... tired. And—" The man shook his head. "I don't know what he was seeing, but I don't think it was Elysium anymore."  
  
"What happened after the slavers dropped the bomb on the spaceport?"  
  
"The ground, it rippled, like the ocean. Silent, then there was the loudest boom I'd ever heard. Thought I'd gone deaf from it. And then the tarmac collapsed, just caved right the hell in. And then, I heard it. I have never heard a sound like that in my life and it'll be too soon if I ever hear it again."  
  
"Heard what, Alex?"  
  
"When the Tarmac exploded. From underneath, and I heard it in my bones, it was like all of space screaming in my head and there was this green light and—" He covered his face, folding in on himself and Kaidan winced in sympathy. "I can't. I can't."  
  
"It's ok, Alex. We'll get you your meds and you can go back to your room."  
  
The video flickered with a reminder about security and went blank, and Kaidan scrolled back to the main folder. From one still image, Lieutenant Shepard's face looked back, full lips pulled down as if he were afraid to smile and pale eyes like old, glacial ice focused slightly off to the side, shy and serious. The Hero of Elysium, who'd been locked up on Terra Nova since the Blitz. From additional files, thousands of redacted words, pre-service police records and training regiment file alike, barcoded across the screen.  
  
Kaidan flicked off the omnitool and removed his headphones, watching his destination grow ever closer beneath the transport shuttle. All his training, his education, had led to this moment. He'd leapt at the opportunity after Director Sanders had put him on the Shepard case, to prove what he could do. But it had taken six months of interviews, paperwork, and ever escalating requests, putting the Grissom Academy and Ascension ever more visibly in the political crosshairs, to be able to even talk to Admiral Hackett about it, and another six to actually get permission to come to Hendrix to speak to the Hero of Elysium.  
  
If he screwed this up, it wasn't just his career on the line, but programs for biotic kids all across human space, and that weight sat behind his eyes in little, spiky lead balls.  
  
He rubbed his forehead as his seatmate shifted—huge, all elbows and knees. The urge to snap at the man died as he realised the marine was staring. "Sorry, man." The marine rubbed his neck. "Was that ... about Lieutenant Shepard?" He leaned in with a whisper, "The Hero of Elysium, right?"  
  
"Sorry, it's kind of classified." Kaidan shrugged and the marine nodded, then laughed.  
  
"It's cool, man. I'm Vega, uh, Lieutenant Vega. James." He laughed again, shaking his head. "I'm here for... "classified" too, y'know?" He tapped his nose and offered his hand.  
  
"Kaidan Alenko. I'm... an instructor... at the Grissom Academy." Kaidan quickly wiped the crumbs from his lunch on his trousers and shook it, trying not to flinch at the man's ridiculous bear grip. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant, for totally classified reasons."  
  
"Classified." Vega grinned again. "That's all right, man."  
  
  
**2.  
2183, Alliance Base Hendrix, Asteroid X57, a moonlet in orbit with Terra Nova. Special Projects Building.**  
  
Vega had followed Kaidan all the way from the spaceport domes, through security up to the huge, artificial biome that housed the base, right to the main building's reception desk. After the third body scan and complementary naked decon spray, the marine elbowed him as they waited to collect their clothing. "So, I overheard you telling them about your implants. You're a biotic?" he asked, then froze. "Shit, that ain't rude to ask, is it?"  
  
Kaidan laughed and grabbed his shirt from the conveyor belt. A cloying, custardy scent like artificial bananas clung to the fabric. "Ugh, I hate this smell," he grumbled, then turned to Vega. "No, no. I don't usually lead with that in conversation, but it's fine."  
  
"Yeah, I can get that. I hear the talk. It's cool though, right? Like the asari, right?" Vega gestured wildly and narrowly missed smacking Kaidan with his trousers.  
  
"Sort of. Human biotics don't have hundreds of years of training under their belts." Kaidan finished dressing, then let a small blue spark flash off his fingertips. "We're getting there though."  
  
When they arrived at the desk, Vega clapped him on the shoulder, his enthusiasm nearly knocking Kaidan over as he took his leave. "Later, Classified."  
  
Kaidan watched him go, and then turned to the officer at the desk. "Doctor Kaidan Alenko. I'm here to see—" He offered his hand, only to find a holoboard shoved at him. "Doctor Michel, right."  
  
After a thumb print, retinal scan and DNA sample, they let Kaidan stew in the lobby, clutching his case for the hours until his escort came to get him. The fountain in the middle of the atrium was a monolithic collection of simple, geometric shapes, and it was meditative, watching the water turn one giant sphere iridescent in the artificial, late afternoon sun. Another protein bar was gumming around in his mouth when a shadow cut across the light streaming into the lobby.  
  
"Doctor Alenko." A big marine saluted him and Kaidan fought to keep his eyes from rolling. "It's a pleasure to have you at Hendrix, sir."  
  
"Thank you... Lieutenant?" Kaidan nodded towards the man's uniform.  
  
"Lieutenant Vega." Vega's lips twitched with a tiny smile. "I'll take you to the classified wing."  
  
"You certainly hit the ground running," Kaidan said. He jogged to keep up with the bigger man as they navigated the white-coated crowds flowing through the halls.  
  
"Shit, shower and shave is all a good marine needs." Vega whispered with a curt nod until they were safely in the lift. Away from the eyes, his demeanour changed and his dark eyes lit up as he rocked on his feet. "They were happy to get me on board as quickly as possible. 'Sides, I can sleep after I meet Shepard. They rotate his security staff. I've been on the potential rotation for months and this guy is a hero. He drew batarian fire long enough for the reinforcements to get there. I had friends on Elysium who'd be dead if it weren't for him and—" He watched the floors change as the lift dropped lower. "And I don't know why they're keepin' him locked up. I just want t'shake his hand," he said quickly, before his professional face snapped back into place. "Here we are, sir."  
  
Kaidan forced his smile down. "Thank you, Lieutenant."  
  
"Just my job, sir." Vega winked. "Doctor Michel is just over there." He waved a meaty hand in the direction of a tiny, auburn-haired woman watching a screen, between an older, bald human and a shimmering, azure asari. That caught Kaidan off guard. He'd had to jump through infinite flaming hoops to get into the facility, and he was already a vetted, security-clearanced-by-the-actual-Alliance human employee.  
  
Michel looked up and her serious expression lightened. "Doctor Alenko. It's wonderful to finally meet you in person." She rose. "This is Doctor Gerald Wilson, my associate." Michel nodded at the man beside her. "And this is Doctor Liara T'Soni from Thessia. She's a... specialist."  
  
"Doctors." Kaidan shook their hands as Vega loomed at the entrance to the office. He lingered on the asari's for a moment before he let it drop. "I'm very sorry, I'm just surprised to see—"  
  
"—an Asari here. I can imagine, Doctor Alenko," T'Soni finished, the curving tentacles on her faintly scaled skin blushing a darker blue.  
  
"I requested a Prothean expert a while back." Doctor Michel chuckled as she gathered some datapads. "When Admiral Hackett said you were coming, I took the chance to ask again. A top biotic specialist and a top Prothean expert—thank god for funding. Doctor T'Soni is the best in her field and… well, Admiral Hackett pretends he wasn't pleased but..." She sat back. "He has a great deal of respect for what Shepard did, and he understands that what happened wasn't the lieutenant's fault in any way. Without him, well, we wouldn't be able to—" Her accent clipped sharp and quick over the words before Kaidan stopped her.  
  
"I'm sorry. What am I missing?" Kaidan looked around, hoping for some sort of sanity check from Vega, but the marine's back was to the closed office and Kaidan sighed. "What happened? What are you talking about? I'm here because humanity's first biotic hero hasn't been seen or heard from in seven years and we need him. We're fighting for future generations of kids like him and—"  
  
"Great. You're one of those L2 fanboys, aren't you?" Wilson muttered. "We've been keeping this project under wraps because of people like you and—"  
  
"Doctor Alenko, I'm sorry—you haven't been fully read in." Michel cut Wilson off and slapped the stack of datapads into Kaidan's hand. "Welcome, Doctor Alenko. You'll need to get up to speed quickly." Her lips twisted in a pained smile.  
  
Kaidan held them, then glanced over at the monitor. It showed a beautiful, spacious room, walls scrawled with dark, messy shapes, and a handsome face with pale eyes like old glacial ice looking up at the camera, gaze direct and bright.  
  
He felt a delicate chill down his spine, and Shepard smiled into the camera, as if only for him. The unease Kaidan felt was mingled with something else and the chill burned off into a flush he prayed the others didn't see.  
  
  
**3.  
Badly damaged drone vid, metadata scrolling in the corner reading "Elysium Broadcasting Corporation", 2176.**  
  
"This is Rebecca Ng with EBC covering this unprecedented attack on Alliance soil by what appears to be batarians." The audio crackled as the remote camera drone rocked from the shockwaves of slaver cannon fire. "We're here as a brave, apparently biotic marine—"  
  
Kaidan paused the vid, staring at the image of a vanguard in mid-strike. Lightning frozen on a battered body, and Kaidan's heart jumped. He scratched absently at the scars on his knuckles where turian claws had broken his fragile child's skin.  
  
"I remember seeing this during the Blitz." Kaidan forced his hands still. "I remember thinking how important this was."  
  
This was everything the Alliance didn't want: a god unleashed, an ancient war-dance painted in batarian blood. Kaidan was no fool—Grissom Academy, and Ascension by extension, found its funding in the Alliance's desire for surgical biotic weapons.  
  
This was anything but surgical.  
  
He pushed play again, and he swore the biotic implants under his own skin started singing in resonance with the man on the screen. No sooner did the action take up again, Shepard thundering into a slaver shuttle, than the reporter's awed voice broke into a shriek as the groundburster struck. This part he had not seen before, and he leaned closer to the terminal with a frown.  
  
Alex Ramirez's broken-child voice echoed in Kaidan's ears as the ground rippled, stone liquefying as the bomb shredded the spaceport. The drone's cameras rapidly cycled through modes, trying to keep up with the spreading bubble of destruction.  
  
There was nothing but silence then as the audio cut out and the spaceport collapsed, Shepard vanishing under waves of crumbling rubble, vehicles following the destruction like carelessly discarded toys. Then not even that, smoke and stillness before the ruined pavement swelled again, blistering from below.  
  
And then the green. The green flash at the edge of sunset Kaidan remembered from his grandparents' farm, wind soft through the wheat, waiting for that ephemeral moment. He hit the pause button on the terminal so hard then that the desk rattled and Doctor Michel dropped her coffee.  
  
Shepard, in the middle of that auroral storm. Kaidan could almost hear the singing in his own eezo. His torn uniform had melted into something else, grey and hard—and those faded scars on Kaidan's hands ached deeper. Frame by frame he advanced forward, watching Shepard vanish under the chitinous skin as stained glass wings unfolded. A sphere of emerald light expanded as the groundburster's bubble had, and Kaidan watched in horror as the Alliance reinforcements, gunships from the Agincourt, were caught, spiraling out of control before 'No Signal' flickered in the dark static.  
  
"What... in the fuck did I just see?" Kaidan whispered, sitting back and rubbing the back of his neck, trembling fingertips tracing the outlines of his implant scars. The L2 ached in his brain. "What was that?"  
  
"The reason humanity's first biotic hero hasn't been heard from in seven years," Michel muttered, sopping up her coffee with an extra lab coat.  
  
"We've tested every square inch of blood, skin and hair we could since we got him, and what we've discovered is that that thing might look like Shepard, but it isn't human any more," Wilson said. Kaidan fought down the urge to punch him.  
  
He focused instead on the staticky screen. "His biotics were green."  
  
"Well, as you know, the dark energy manipulated by biotics are only usable to a certain percentage, and the excess is expressed as visible—" Doctor T'Soni chirped and Kaidan yanked Doctor Michel's coffee cup away with a small display of power. Doctor T'Soni blinked as he held it in the space between them, iridescent cobalt sparking against a grouchy novelty cat's silhouette.  
  
"I'm intimately familiar with the visible light offgassing for biotics, Doctor T'Soni," Kaidan said softly as he set the cup down, the clatter startlingly loud in the quiet room. Wilson grunted and Kaidan ignored him. "I'm also aware that even asari matriarchs only express down to a cyan hue. Still blue, still very short wavelength, very high energy. Green would mean—"  
  
"That golden-green would mean Shepard's biotics are functioning much more efficiently than an asari matriarch with a millennia of training. By several hundred times." T'Soni hugged herself. "And because of that, it's my hypothesis that the lieutenant's become part prothean."  
  
"Part..." Kaidan lifted an eyebrow and looked to Doctor Michel for help. She only shrugged. "Prothean. The same ancient super-race that left a ruin on Mars? That supposedly built the citadel? Prothean. Is she serious?"  
  
"Well." Michel tucked her hair back as she looked at the bank of monitors on the desk and coughed. "It's a distinct possibility. John Shepard has been changed on a fundamental, elemental level. He's far beyond his pre-enlistment and pre-Alliance retroviral upgrade scans. There's no sign of alien nanomachinery in his cells. It's as if his DNA is rewriting itself. His body is ...upgrading itself as if by some sort of unknown command." She drummed her fingers on the desk. "It's been changing, subtly, incrementally, for the last seven years. He's genetically volatile, if you will, and each time we test him..."  
  
"We don't have any prothean DNA to compare to. We don't have any remains but their cities, their beacons—we have bits of their language and we need to show you Shepard's writings and art and you'll see..." Liara began again and Kaidan shook his head forcefully. The terminal crackled with fresh static, echoing his confusion and distress.  
  
"Doctor Michel, I would very much like to talk to Lieutenant Shepard." Kaidan rubbed the back of his hand fretfully. "As soon as humanly, or otherwise, possible."  
  
  
**4.  
A tomb for the living, two miles deep beneath the surface of Asteroid X57.**  
  
At first glance, the room was large and surprisingly airy. Light streamed through a faux window, and splashed the walls with the flickering sun and shadow. There were books, and a gym and a large vid screen across from the couch, and quite honestly, it was bigger than many places Kaidan had lived since leaving BAaT.  
  
The plants were real, as was abstract wall fountain, but the porch opening onto the rolling hills beyond was just a hologram. There was nothing but stone beyond, and he felt a shudder of claustrophobia, thinking about the millions of tons weighing down on him. It was somehow worse than living and working in a space station. Too much matter instead of too little and he wondered how the vanguard could even breathe.  
  
That Shepard had vandalised every square inch of wall and floor space with terrifyingly strange drawings and unreadable scrawls until they'd denied him any further art supplies didn't really surprise him.  
  
Shepard's "apartment" only interfaced with the base through one long, depressingly lit corridor, through three airlocks and scanner chambers. A jarringly cheerful sign at the last one warned about direct contact and recommended full body protection, despite the fact that nothing about Shepard was even remotely contagious.  
  
Even then, there were three feet of transparasteel between Kaidan and the Lieutenant, and he thought he could feel the itch of plasma fields, biotic countermeasures, humming in the walls. Kaidan had to take a moment. Lieutenant Shepard's file photos had shown a striking man, features just a little too large or crooked for the standards of classical handsomeness, but in person, he had a presence that took Kaidan's breath away.  
  
He was too pale, locked away from any real sunlight for years, the faint freckles on his cheeks almost gone. Shepard's rusty hair was too long for regulation, and his beard looked like it had been shaved with a butter knife, but he sat at the counter in neat blue and grey Alliance sweats and leaned his chin on his hands, looking out at Kaidan with those strange, bright eyes.  
  
Kaidan took a seat, in the spartan observation room, on his own side of the counter. Holoscenes on the back wall made it look like a cafe, but the illusion was jarring in the clinical setting. "Lieutenant Shepard," he started, then stopped as his eyes were drawn to the small plasters that peppered Shepard's lean arms. Seven years of sampling every bit of him, Doctor Michel had said. "I"m—"  
  
"Doctor Kaidan Alenko. I felt you come in earlier. And Chloe kindly called down to let me know I was having company." Shepard straightened, hands cupping the silicone mug of coffee that had been dispensed for him. "I felt the asari too, when she came. Liara? We've spoken over the comms a couple of times but she hasn't been down. None of them come down." His lips twisted in a wry smile. "All of my sampling is done by drone nowadays. Ever since Wilson... Well. My shaving too, so." One hand rubbed his jaw ruefully. "Humanity is living amongst the stars, but we still don't have fucking robot barbers, what's up with that?"  
  
The statement was so perfectly dry that Kaidan laughed before he realised he would. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I..."  
  
"No!" Shepard's eyes widened and he waved his hand. "No, no. Please. God, do you know how long it's been since I saw someone laugh?" His own smile softened. "I swear to you I'm not hitting on you. But your last name... are you related to Gladys Alenko of the 2154 Canucks?"  
  
Kaidan blinked, then pushed his datapads aside and leaned in to the glass divider with a grin. "That's my mom. They won the Stanley that year..."  
  
"After she cleared a puck from Vancouver's goal and did only the best mathematical trick shot hockey's ever seen." Shepard finished with a delighted sound. "Rebounded it right off of Kaminsky's helmet and it went across the ice right between the skates of the Penguin's defenders." He fidgeted with the mug. "It's nice to talk to someone from Earth again. I miss the accents."  
  
"It didn't say anywhere in your jacket that you were a hockey fan." Kaidan laughed. "I could probably get mom to sign you a jersey, if you want. She always said it was like when she used to hustle billiards in University."  
  
"That would be really great." Shepard's teeth caught the swell of his lower lip and Kaidan felt a decidedly unprofessional twinge in his trousers. "So, I'm sure the brass didn't let an incredibly handsome guy down here to talk hockey with me. If they did, I really need to reassess my feelings on them." The smile that followed had a brittle edge. "You know, just because they keep me underground so I can't just... biotic-corridor my way out." He added bitterly. "Or just because don't let me shave or cook my own food or have anything but soft utensils and beltless pants—clearly they're still thinking of my overall wellbeing." Shepard's face dropped. "And... Ugh, Мне жаль. Sorry, Doc. That came out... I'm a little out of practice. Talking like a normal human being and not a lab rat, you know."  
  
"You can call me Kaidan if you want. I'm here because my boss at the Grissom Academy put me on your trail, and I've been trying to find you, then get permission to come here for the better part of a year." Kaidan ran his thumb over his own cup of coffee. He hoped the warmth in his face wasn't noticeable to the man behind the glass wall.  
  
"Grissom?" Shepard perked up, just a bit. "As in…?"  
  
"The Alliance commissioned a whole space station after him. I work for what's called the Ascension Project. We're teaching biotic kids, helping them. Giving them a place." Kaidan scrupulously examined the patterning on the fake stone countertop. "I've been kind of hoping we could make it a place for you as well."  
  
Shepard leaned his chin on one hand and pressed the other to the glass, fingers splayed, as if he could touch Kaidan through that seemingly impossible distance. Kaidan brushed the glass with his fingertips, and he thought he could feel the warmth of Shepard's powers through it. "Uh. Thank you. For not leading off with the walls of crazy behind me."  
  
"I figured we could get around to that, Lieutenant." Kaidan chuckled, spreading his hand to match. "I am curious though, it's quite the art project."  
  
"There's so much I need to tell you about that." He laughed, raking bitten nails through his messy hair with his free hand. "About the Reapers. They're coming and no one believes me. It's important. Really important and I swear to you it's not just the psychosis talking."  
  
Kaidan found himself looking at the black scrawls defacing the walls. "I'm willing to listen, Lieutenant."  
  
Shepard paused for a long moment. "Kaidan." He smiled as if tasting the name. "Please, just call me Shepard, ok? It used to be something else back in the day," he said, a green flash behind his pale eyes so brief Kaidan thought he might have imagined it at first.  
  
With a ghost of a smile, Shepard's voice dropped to a bare whisper, and Kaidan shivered, feeling the words more in his spine more than his ears. "But when you need to make a fresh start, sometimes you have to make yourself new. A street kid wearing a borrowed name in Moscow eventually gets you to John Doe Shepard with a little work. You understand. You had to reinvent yourself too, after that place, in the middle of nowhere instead of under it, after that place broke you, and you broke some of it. Kaidan Alenko had to learn to become someone else to survive, and you're very good at surviving."  
  
Kaidan yanked his hand back as if it had been burnt. "How do you know about that?" He croaked out, fingers curled against his own chest, trembling.  
  
Shepard tilted his head, then pushed back from the counter with a long sigh, the light gone from his eyes. "And now you know why they don't send people down here to talk to me in person anymore... Doc."  
  
  
**5.  
In the artificial biome's enhanced sunlight. Warm, but still shivering.**  
  
Vega had tried to insert himself between the furious Doctor Michel and Kaidan long enough for the latter to high-tail it out to a rooftop courtyard, the stygian chill still clinging to his bones. He dictated a brusque report to Kaylee as he stalked across the greensward, hoping he could get his thoughts composed properly.  
  
"We have to get him out of here, Director," he finished just as he heard the angry shouting.  
  
"Doctor Alenko!" She finally dodged Vega, her tiny hand grabbing Kaidan's arm with surprising force. "You were told you could speak to Shepard remotely at your convenience—not go down to his c… to his rooms!"  
  
"Were you going to say his 'cage'? Because you can put all the holographic landscapes in the windows you want, he's still buried in a tomb!" Kaidan snapped. "My god, no wonder he's having a psychotic break if his only contact with the outside world is the drones you send down there to probe him!"  
  
"We're under strict orders to monitor and contain him, yes." She let him go. "He's mentally and physically unstable. He can't be allowed to roam free. He's a walking xenobiohazard. But it's not like he's in prison—he's being cared for."  
  
"He can't leave—so despite the nice furniture, I fail to see the distinction." Kaidan rubbed his face. "And cared for? He's a vanguard. You need to be aware their training conditions them in certain ways. Of the fifty that are currently in active service, thirty eight developed paranoia, fear of being trapped, fear of being suffocated. Shepard's not on that list, but I suspect only because he hasn't be examined by someone competent!" Kaidan spat out those last words. "His concerns about these... Reapers..."  
  
He didn't expect the slap to his face that left his ears ringing.  
  
"You arrogant little bastard. Do you have any idea what we've gone through with hi—" Doctor Michel narrowed her eyes, but Vega's less-than-discreet cough gave her pause. "Yes, Lieutenant?"  
  
"Ma'am, you're both wanted down in Conference A. There's something you both need to see." Vega said, shrugging apologetically. "It's important."  
  
"We're not through, Alenko," Doctor Michel muttered as she spun on her heel and Kaidan let out a long breath before moving to follow. He glanced at his omnitool and stifled a groan. He had been at Hendrix for less than six hours, and he'd already alienated the one person who had control of his access to Shepard. He was exhausted, he was hungry, and he badly needed Michel to still want him there.  
  
"Doctor Michel... Chloe! Please, wait up." He jogged after her. "You have to understand—Shepard and I are part of the first generation of human biotics. Almost nothing is known about what the effects of our powers are long term. People treat us like plague rats or lepers from the dark ages when they're not trying to weaponise us. And across the galaxy there are more human biotic children being born each year."  
  
She paused in the doorway and rubbed the back of her neck, her tiny frame folding in on itself. "I know. I know, Doctor Alenko." She tapped the call button for the lift. "Despite our best intentions, I know what we're doing to him is cruel. And if you have any suggestions, I am willing to listen. It's why I jumped at the chance to get someone with actual biotic experience here." They stepped into the lift when it arrived, jostling around Vega's bulk. "We fear what we don't understand, and Command is afraid of biotic extremist groups... and very, very afraid of what Shepard may represent."  
  
"Getting him re-integrated with other biotics, not to mention other humans, is the start," Kaidan offered as the doors slid open with a hiss. "Keeping him..."  
  
"It's about time, Alenko." The voice coming from one of the conference room vid screens made his heart stop. "We've been waiting."  
  
"Director Sanders?" Kaidan coughed as his pulse returned. "That was fast." He glanced at the other screens, and pulled his composure together. He recognised Hackett's grim visage from their communications on one, and the other, a lean, dark man wearing Captain's bars. There was something distinctly familiar about him, but it was just out of reach.  
  
At the table, Liara sat with Wilson and few other staffers. They all looked desperately uncomfortable.  
  
"What?" Kaidan looked around as he took his seat. "What happened?"  
  
"I've been studying, since I got here, the drawings that Shepard's produced." Liara brought them up on another screen. Massive dark scrawls with fingers or claws reaching out to the tiny figures scattered below them. Over and over. Desperate jagged lines as if he hoped the repetition might somehow bring clarity. Kaidan was more interested in the Captain's response, though. "I spent two years working on the excavation there since the Blitz, trying to piece together what the groundburster destroyed, and what Shepard's been drawing and ranting about for the last few years, well. When Doctor Michel showed them to me I began to think he might be replaying a psychic imprint, a... prothean nightmare, if you will." Liara's voice was background noise to the Captain's expression, eyes widening then glancing over. The twitch in Director Sanders' face could have only been in response.  
  
He shook himself out of his thoughts, latching on to something Liara had said. "Wait, excavation? Is that why they never reopened the spaceport, just built a new one on the other side of the colony?" Kaidan asked. To his surprise, Hackett nodded.  
  
"The prothean city was buried so far below ground that initial scans for the colony never discovered it. Afterwards, we felt it was important to leave the security domes in place. Keep more potential victims out," Admiral Hackett said, tugging on his neat beard. "The teams of archeologists found the place had been buried in a landslide and the groundburster's shockwave energy reactivated a beacon just long enough for it to react violently with Shepard's biotics when he fell down there."  
  
"Knowing the protheans encoded data into their beacons that we can't decipher yet, I sent out some queries to colleagues of mine, to ask if they'd seen anything like this before... keeping the source secret of course." Liara tapped her omnitool and the screen split. "I received this from Ann Bryson—a researcher working at a dig site on Namakli."  
  
There was a collective hitch of breath. A weathered cliff on some godforsaken, sun-blasted wasteland, and painted in an alcove, the rubble around it only recently cleared and tagged with holographic markers, the same forms rendered in ancient pigments. "Ann estimates it, conservatively, at about two billion standard years old." Liara sat back. "I was expecting prothean mythography. I was not expecting a much older representation of the same thing." She absently rubbed through the graceful tentacles on her head. "Something else is happening here."  
  
"David," Kaylee said softly and the captain on the other screen let out a long breath. Kaidan covered his mouth to muffle the squeak that everyone heard anyways.  
  
Captain David Anderson. He'd seen the picture on Kaylee's desk. Her ex-husband.  
  
"Whatever happened to give the protheans those nightmares, whatever inspired that." Anderson sighed. "It's back."  
  
  
**6.  
A conference room feeling far too cold for the environmental controls.**  
  
"We're on our way from Eden Prime to the Citadel." Anderson rubbed his eyes. "I have to explain how I got a SPECTRE killed during a shakedown cruise that turned into a geth attack on the colony."  
  
"Geth?" Wilson said, confused. "What do the Geth have to do with Shepard?"  
  
"They were accompanied by this." A new image joined the others, footage from a soldier's helmet-cam—a ship, huge and black amidst the misty violet-rose clouds of Eden Prime. "Hundreds are dead... or worse. And this thing oversaw it."  
  
"Doctor Michel." Hackett sat back in his distant office. "I want Shepard to see this."  
  
"I do not—" She fumbled the words, face pinching with worry. "The moment he's out of containment, we could lose him." Beside her, Liara started rifling through her notes, furiously scribbling away.  
  
"He's not a stray dog, Doctor," Hackett snapped. "It doesn't do us any good to talk around it if your resident Cassandra isn't here to see it as well."  
  
Chloe bristled, but Kaidan was out of his seat in a moment. "Let me," he said, holding up his hands. "Lieutenant Vega and I can get him. He likes me." He shot Wilson a thin little smile with those last words.  
  
She grunted, defeated. "Fine. But be careful, and be prepared to sedate him if necessary. And we have a skinsuit—the kind marines wear under their hardsuits—in the observation room for him. We constructed it to monitor his biometrics and… keep him from touching things."  
  
"Get him into it, and do not let it touch you," Wilson added with a shudder.  
  
Kaidan merely nodded and turned, Vega falling in behind him. "Oh my god, oh my god," Vega whispered to him as they hurried down the corridor. "I have no idea what's going on, but still." Kaidan thought Vega's rumble actually broke into a squeal at the end.  
  
"You and me both," Kaidan admitted as his stomach dropped with the shift of gravity. "Did they tell you what happened between Shepard and Wilson?"  
  
"Just that he went in there about four years ago to do some sampling, and he broke protocol and took the glove off his biohazard suit." Vega rocked on his feet. "Shepard went nuts on him and they flooded the room with sedative to get Wilson out."  
  
"And you're still not scared of him?" Kaidan asked himself as much as Vega.  
  
"Man, I been here less than a day, Doc, and I can already tell you that guy's a rat." Vega snorted. "Shepard had a reason, even if no one's talking about it. He's a marine. I'm a marine. So, no, I'm not scared." He looked down at Kaidan. "You're not either."  
  
"Unsettled, maybe," Kaidan admitted. "But no. Not scared." The realisation felt good as the doors opened to the airlocks and chambers leading into the observation room. "Hopefully he'll—"  
  
"You came back." Shepard was pressed against the transparasteel. "I am really sorry about before and..." He watched Vega pull out the undersuit. "Wait, you really are gettting me out of here?"  
  
"There's some stuff going on upstairs. Admiral Hackett ordered that we bring you," Kaidan said with a smile matching the one sweeping across Shepard's face. "I will do everything I can to keep them from putting you back in this hole." There was that green flash in Shepard's eyes again, and Kaidan felt a strange itch in his nerves. The hairs on his arm and the back of his neck bristled as his amp hummed. He fought it, tried to push down the rising, crackling tide of power trembling up and down his spine. "Shepard? Are you..?"  
  
In response, there was a blinding flare and Kaidan's ears popped from the sudden displacement of air as he went tumbling across the room, landing painfully with two hundred pounds of vanguard sitting on him. "Thank you, Kaidan Alenko," Shepard said, straddling his chest. Before Kaidan could say anything, Shepard's mouth was on his, hands gentle and soft as they cupped his face, though the kiss was passionately harsh. When he was done, Shepard sat back, pupils huge. "Thank you," he said again, and sprang to his feet, offering Kaidan a hand. "I do like you."  
  
"So much for not touching him," Vega said, clutching the suit to his chest as Shepard suddenly wheeled and stalked over to him. "...Lieutenant Shepard?"  
  
Kaidan watched in surprise as Shepard dragged Vega's face closer to his, pressing their foreheads together. "Vega, James. Classified. That's all right, man." Shepard laughed. "Good to meet you."  
  
Kaidan's lips tingled like he'd licked a power cell and his heart was beating in double time. He felt as flushed as Vega looked when Shepard released him. "Wilson told us not to touch you," he said weakly as Shepard took the undersuit from Vega with a little smile.  
  
"Wilson is an asshole," Shepard muttered as he started to strip, and Kaidan didn't realise he was staring until Vega coughed and elbowed him. The vanguard wasn't a big man, but he had the body of a dancer, of a martial artist. Muscles honed for explosive motion. Freckled skin decorated with crude prison tattoos amongst the scars. "There was something, something bad, but then they pumped me full of drugs and I forgot. It doesn't stay long. Like the memory of Vyrnus' neck breaking under your biotics. It's there and then, bang-snap, it's not."  
  
"We keep telling people biotics aren't mind readers." Kaidan laughed weakly, then found himself looking between Shepard and the thick glass wall. "Wait. You—You charged out. Could you do that all along? You don't have an amp. And there's plasma fields."  
  
"Don't need one anymore," Shepard said absently, doing a sinuous shimmy into the second-skin undersuit. It was actually worse than seeing him naked, Kaidan decided. And by worse, a little voice in his brain leered, he meant infinitely better. Shepard was striking on his own, but the serpentine sheen of the undersuit made him breathtaking. And he didn't even know, Kaidan thought. He just kept muttering along.  
  
"And plasma yields to dark energy as much as anything But where was I going to go? Through the airlocks? Into a lift they could cut or flood? Fight my way out?" He shrugged, the suit squeaking slightly as the air hissed out of it to seal it against his skin. "It didn't seem workable." He looked down at the gloves and pulled them on with a grimace. "I'm sorry about... touching you. My biotics work differently now. Like an extra sense. I don't entirely get it but everything's a book, now. It was the fastest way for me to learn about everything that’s been going... Oh. “ Shepard blinked. “Captain Anderson. I know him. Well. I met him. Once. You know him too.” Shepard turned to Kaidan, chewing over the new information rattling around in his brain. “He’s your boss’s ex-husband. Wow. That’s..”  
  
"It’s fine, it’s fine. Don't be," Kaidan said quickly, even as Vega made an embarrassed cough. "Let's just get upstairs." He tentatively put a hand on Shepard's arm before the vanguard started off on another tangent. "You're a little scattered now, aren't you?"  
  
"Sitting in a wheat field you should be bored but you're waiting for the green flash. Sitting on the beach and you're going to miss Earth but it's not good for you anymore. It'll pass. Let's go," Shepard said to them both, an apologetic smile on his lips.  
  
Vega shook his head and opened the airlocks. "You saved some friends of mine on Elysium. I always wanted to say thank you. On everyone's behalf." He turned and gave Shepard a brisk salute.  
  
Shepard blinked, and lifted his chin just a little, shoulders squaring before he returned it. "You're... welcome," He said with a tiny smile.  
  
Kaidan's heart broke a little bit at that smile, but the vanguard froze, looking up at the ceiling. He exchanged a look with Vega, then gently nudged Shepard. "Hey, are you ok?"  
  
Shepard only grabbed them both dragging them down as a sudden roar echoed through the elevator shaft and the lights flickered wildly. By instinct, Kaidan threw up his barrier, only to feel Shepard's take it over, powers doubling back on each other to form a wall as the doors blew off, rubble and smoke choking the corridor with a deafening boom.  
  
  
**7.  
Two miles down and feeling less than fine.**  
  
"What the fuck was that?" Vega sat up, shouting over the ringing in his ears.  
  
"Power grid's fluctuating. Are we under attack?" Shepard gently released the hold he had on their biotics and his gloved hand found Kaidan's—a shy, human gesture of reassurance. "...I don't even know what planet I'm on, honestly."  
  
"Terra Nova." Kaidan dusted himself off. "Well, an asteroid NEAR Terra Nova. So not likely."  
  
"Elevator's gone, man," Vega said as he shook his head, then peered down the now-empty shaft, the lift long gone below. "Either of you guys know how to fly?"  
  
"Ok, this is what we're going to do," Shepard began and Kaidan wondered if this was how he'd been, mobilizing the ground forces on Elysium: brisk, professional and confident. "Jimmy Vega. You're strong. Need you to grab me and Kaidan and jump into the elevator shaft."  
  
'Or not.' Kaidan rubbed his now-aching head, but Shepard didn't seem to notice.  
  
"They weight-rated your lift at BAaT." Shepard turned to him, visibly rifling through the jumble of memories he'd seen. "800 kilograms. That's good. That's alot. You're really strong, and we're going to need that."  
  
"I don't think I can lift the elevator car," Kaidan started, but Shepard shook his head.  
  
"No, no. You just need to hold us long enough for me to open the charge tunnel. I can feel her up there. You shook hands with the asari...Liara? Liara, before. I have her power signature."  
  
"You—" Vega made a futile gesture. "You're gonna charge Doc T'Soni from two miles underground? Carrying both of us? Don't you guys need to see your target?" He looked desperately at Kaidan for some reassurance, but Kaidan could only shake his head helplessly.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous, Jimmy. I'm gonna charge her through a two mile long elevator shaft. Lot less matter to worry about with the phase. Kaidan, would you say she was in, say, an empty room when you last saw her? Nice big empty room with not much I could accidentally phase us into? Not a broom closet or anything, right?" He raked his hair back, pacing furiously.  
  
"Conference room," Kaidan said weakly. "Shepard..."  
  
"You're crazy," Vega supplied helpfully.  
  
"That's what they've been telling me for years." Shepard cracked his knuckles and looked up the shaft. "Yeah, I can do this. Do you think they have my omnitool up there still? I was reading something before everything went to shit." He rocked on his feet. "I'd really like to see how that book ends up."  
  
"Loco," Vega intoned again. "Abso-fucking-lutely loco." He looked between Shepard and Kaidan. "But what the hell. I don't want to die buried down here."  
  
"That's the spirit." Shepard clapped him on the arm, then turned to Kaidan. "We just met and I know trust is something you don't give easily. But please. Trust me. I won't betray that."  
  
"Vega's right. I don't want to die down here either." Kaidan sighed. "Let's do this."  
  
"Awesome." Shepard's smile was far from encouraging but there was no time to complain as the big marine clotheslined them both into the gaping maw of the shaft. Breath knocked from his lungs, Kaidan struggled in the next second to envelop them all in his lift field. It wasn't the weight that was the issue—humans were slippery, squirming things as opposed to static weights and he wasn't certain he could hold them.  
  
He was certain they would fall, but in the next moment, every cell in his body suddenly felt like they lurched nauseatingly to the left.  
  
One more heartbeat, and then the world was a blur, glittering and beautiful and frozen in a brilliant green tableaux. He was weightless and immobile and floating in a perfect moment. Vega's eyes were huge and Shepard looked beatific. It was no wonder vanguards loved what they did. He understood now.  
  
Just as suddenly, there was a boom, nearly as loud as the explosion that had destroyed the elevator, and that perfect moment exploded into red and orange and sticky acrid smoke in the back of his throat. Kaidan's eyeballs felt as if they were two or three seconds behind the rest of him as they tumbled over the floor. Distantly, he thought he heard Liara's startled scream.  
  
He sat up, then promptly fell over, looking over to see a blurry, doubled Shepard sitting on a panicked asari. Beside him, Vega vomited without preamble. Kaidan felt his stomach twist, but a dry heave was all he managed in response.  
  
"It worked. Holy god it worked. Who knew?" Shepard laughed hysterically as slid off Liara's lap, then cocked his head. "You have eyebrows."  
  
"I draw them on because I find it puts humans at ease," Liara blurted out, confused. "You...blind-charged from the containment area. How..?"  
  
"That's nice of you. Considerate. Why is everything on fire? Is it usually?" Shepard looked around at the sputtering lights and smoldering furniture. "Did I do this?"  
  
"No. We're under attack!" Liara shouted, then covered her mouth. "Right after Doctor Alenko went down to get you, an explosion went off. There are human troops, not Alliance, all over the building. I've been hiding in here, but they had to have heard your charge. I don't know where Chloe or Wilson or the others are."  
  
"I knew that cabron Wilson was no good." Vega said, peering through a crack in the door at the white armours milling about. "Fuck. That's Cerberus. Usually they stick to the Traverse, not Alliance space. Humanity's sword, what a bunch of shit. He must've sold us out."  
  
"Well, Captain Anderson or Hackett... someone must be bringing help." Kaidan tried to make it sound less a question and more a statement of fact.  
  
"Do you know where my omnitool is?" Shepard crouched next to her. "I could really use it."  
  
"...I think it's in Doctor Michel's lab?" Liara now looked to Kaidan for some guidance, and once again he simply shrugged.  
  
"Ok. Good." Shepard took off his glove and patted her head, then dusted himself off, oblivious as the asari appreciatively took in the dry gleam of the undersuit shifting on his skin. "I'll be right back."  
  
"Do you even know where that is?" she called after him, shivering.  
  
"No, but you did." Shepard grinned. "Also, we need to talk about the Reapers. But first, Jimmy, can I have your gun?"  
  
"No. You are loco and I am not giving you a gun, especially not mine." Vega glared at him. "I mean, good job on gettin' us up here, but no."  
  
"Fair enough. You should protect Doctor T'Soni." Shepard nodded gravely. "And Kaidan, too. I like him," he added in a whisper that was just a bit too loud. Kaidan sank into his jacket and shrugged apologetically at Liara's startled stare.  
  
"I got that earlier." Vega turned red again. "And what are you going to do against—" Vega peered out the crack again. "There are like fifty guys in full armour out there. Probably turrets. Who knows what else."  
  
"I'm going to kill them." Shepard shrugged, vanishing into a thunderclap that threw the others backwards into a tumbling pile of furniture and flesh.  
  
  
**8.  
It happened so fast, Kaidan might as well have been locked in another biotic charge.**  
  
As Shepard tore a path, lightning green and bloody red through the halls to the lab, Kaidan followed. A Cerberus trooper appeared from a side corridor between them, and he summoned a reave, blue fire dancing between them. The trooper screamed, thin and wet, as the biotics tore him apart from the inside and Kaidan bent to retrieve the writhing man's weapon.  
  
"You... Please..." The man whimpered, clawing fretfully at his helmet. "We have orders to..."  
  
As much as Kaidan wasn't fond of guns, Shepard was right. He was very good at surviving. "Sorry," Kaidan said as the pistol kicked in his hand.  
  
Vega and Liara were not far behind, and the big marine had retrieved a Harrier from one of the fallen. "Doc, you alright?" he shouted, clearly relieved as Kaidan nodded. "And you... Doc? I gotta find different nicknames for you two... you good with that?"  
  
"I've had a little training. Every asari does at some point," Liara said, deftly checking the thermal clip in an overheated Talon. "You, Kaidan? You seem... surprisingly at home with that gun."  
  
Kaidan rolled his eyes. "The galaxy's not a very friendly place for humans at times." He laughed. "A guy has to learn to protect himself."  
  
There was more gunfire from a lower tier and Kaidan clutched the pistol close. Vega seemed less concerned. "That's not just Cerberus I hear," he said, jogging over to the balcony overlooking the lobby atrium. "That's M8 Avenger fire! Aw, yeah, cavalry's here."  
  
Kaidan joined him to see a group of Alliance Marines mopping up. "That was fast." He leaned on the railing, then looked around, panic rising. "Shepard. Oh my god, we lost Shepard." There was no thunder, no screaming, no emerald flashes of light, and Kaidan thought he felt the awful, old-fish taste of his supplement bar rising in the back of his throat. "I lost Shepard."  
  
"Kaidan, look!" Liara pointed upwards to another balcony high above. A muffled charge boom and green lightning struck the lobby, scattering the marines. From the strike point, a figure rolled away, leaving behind a mangled Cerberus trooper.  
  
"Oh no." Kaidan breathed. Shepard's black undersuit was enveloped in pearlescent grey, living plates that shifted and moved with his body, shivering ripples and spikes along the lines of biotic force dancing from his body. His face was masked, eyes glowing brilliantly green as those impossible wings twitched. The vanguard crouched, assessing the soldiers as a sphere of power bloomed in his hand—the same sphere that had destroyed the slavers and half the Alliance reinforcements on Elysium.  
  
The Marines brought their weapons to bear on their new enemy and Kaidan screamed Shepard's name, a shockwave knocking everyone to the ground. He leapt in its wake, trusting his powers to slow the pull of the station's artificial gravity, and inserted himself between Shepard and the Alliance. "This is Lieutenant Shepard! Stop!"  
  
He saw Shepard out of the corner of his eye, the sphere dissipating with a pop. The grey plates shivered, sliding back on each other as they ran viscous down his arm to vanish into a sputtering omnitool. "You said you wanted to finish your book!" he hissed at the vanguard.  
  
"I did! I do!" Shepard cracked his neck, with an offended sniff. "The armour's a bonus."  
  
"We'll talk about that later." Kaidan's heavy brows knit in annoyance.  
  
"What the fuck is going on?" The marine in the lead flipped up the visor on her helmet. "And who the hell are you?" she barked, rifle never wavering.  
  
"Doctor Kaidan Alenko, Grissom Academy. Are you with Captain Anderson? Because, honestly, he's really the only person I want to see right now," Kaidan said carefully, keeping himself in her sights and in front of Shepard, hands up.  
  
"It's ok, Gunny, stand down." Anderson's voice set the marines to ease immediately. "Doctor Alenko. We've got Doctor Michel, she and the others are safe. The man claiming to be Doctor Wilson's in custody. He's apparently been setting up this assault for a while." The Captain strode forward. "Thankfully the Normandy was diverting here as soon as Kaylee—as soon as Director Sanders contacted me."  
  
"That doesn't..." Shepard shook his head, then stepped around Kaidan. "Doesn't matter. Captain Anderson. Good to see you again, sir. We need to talk about the Reapers."  
  
"That thing on Eden Prime with the geth." Anderson met him halfway. "Is that what you're talking about?"  
  
"There are more. There are so many more and they're coming." Shepard held out his black-gloved hands. "I'm not crazy. Mostly not crazy. You have to believe me. And about Wilson...I..."  
  
"After today, I believe you. And I'm sorry for what you've had to endure, son." Anderson took his hand as he had all those years ago on Elysium. "I told Doctor Michel that I'm bringing you to the Citadel. Hackett's orders. Something's happening, and you need to tell everyone what the beacon showed you."  
  
  
  
  
**~~~~  
  
PART 2: ATTICAN BETA/THESEUS SYSTEM.  
  
  
1.  
Two days later and most definitely not the Citadel**  
  
The Normandy was not a ship built for comfort. She was, however, the Alliance's newest stealth frigate, co-produced with the Turian Hierarchy and now three days overdue to a meeting at the Citadel with Alliance brass and the Council over the death of the turian SPECTRE who'd been assigned to her shakedown run, not to mention the geth and the giant, murderous spaceship that had brought them.  
  
Kaylee hadn't spoken much about her ex-husband, but Kaidan had always gotten the impression she respected him deeply, regardless of their personal issues. The crew clearly respected him as well, which was why they looked only slightly askance at the newcomers—at least when Anderson was around.  
  
Vega had made a case for himself, insisting as Shepard's security officer that he was responsible for both his safety and the safety of others. Liara had simply waved a stack of datapads and papers in Anderson's face and hissed something about protheans before taking over a corner of the medbay, much to the doctor's surprise.  
  
And Shepard had refused to come without Kaidan.  
  
"Which is why it might be a while before I get back to Grissom, Ma'am." Kaidan leaned on the desk in front of the terminal he'd accessed. "Shepard's talked Anderson into a detour. He's amazingly good at getting people to do what he wants," he said and she laughed.  
  
"It's ok, Kaidan." Kaylee smiled and he felt immediately more relaxed. He missed her office. She kept the lights dim for him during their meetings, and the temperature was always right. Even her decor—cool, neutral tones, a simple fountain with a gleaming sphere on a plinth, artfully arranged plants—was soothing. "I put you on this assignment because I know how deep your feelings... your integrity is. I can't imagine you'd leave him to face this alone, now. We all have our parts to play..."  
  
"Ma'am." He ducked his head, embarrassed.  
  
"Do your part for us all, Kaidan. Keep him safe. Humanity needs him." She shook her head. "And thank David for me again."  
  
"I will, Ma'am." Kaidan nodded before closing the connection.  
  
"She still loves him, and he still loves her." Shepard's voice was soft, but still unexpected, and Kaidan turned, heart hammering.  
  
"How do you do that?" he snapped as Shepard crouched beside him, undersuit rasping with the motion. "Sorry. You startled me."  
  
"You're cute when you're flustered." Shepard grinned. "I am hitting on you now, by the way. Is it working? I can't tell. I literally have no idea." He'd shaved at least, and Kaidan thought dumbly that the newly-visible dimples were an unfair advantage.  
  
"Technically, I'm one of your doctors, so it might not be professional." Kaidan took his gloved hand and squeezed it. "But maybe when this is all over, and we've got you settled..."  
  
"It's a date." Shepard beamed. "We're almost there." The sudden shift left Kaidan confused until the vanguard led him to the observation deck window. "I can hear them. I could hear them as soon as we were on board, away from all the noise around Terra Nova."  
  
"Like you can hear me and Liara." Kaidan noticed Shepard hadn't let go of his hand, and he gave it another squeeze. Kaylee was right. He couldn't leave him. Not after meeting him.  
  
"Sort of. They're green. Like me. Song's deeper. Slower. So far away. Different but still the same." Shepard bumped his head against the transparent panel with a grunt. "Ugh. I can't explain what the Reapers are. The images are all screaming and black and claws and so huge... I just know it's bad. But the others… they’ll be able to help me understand. I know it." He rolled his head to peek at Kaidan over his shoulder. "Anderson said he'd kill me if I drew on his brand new spaceship."  
  
"I'd believe him." Kaidan leaned against the glass to look Shepard in the eye. "Are you scared?"  
  
"You can't even imagine how scared." Shepard laughed. "I haven't stopped being scared since my powers—my old powers—first manifested. It's been a real rollercoaster of emotion since then." He squeezed Kaidan's hand tighter, then let it go. "I really am sorry for dragging you along."  
  
"Don't be. My job was to find you, then get you back to people like you. LIke us. And I've never met anyone like you, so..." Kaidan rocked a little, then took Shepard's hand again. "I don't think my job is done yet."  
  
"I'm job security. Good. I like that." Shepard nodded. Kaidan could see he was holding himself very still.  
  
"I don't have your kind of powers." Kaidan chuckled as their omnitools dinged from the ship's comm officer, letting them know they were on final approach to Feros. "But I know what you're thinking and I'm not sure if I'm ready to let you kiss me again yet, Lieutenant John-or-whatever you used to call yourself-Shepard." He watched Shepard's shoulders sag, and ran his thumb over the back of the vanguard's gloved hand. "But, let's just say, it's not off the table permanently."  
  
Shepard danced away from him with a grin. "I do like you, Doctor Kaidan Alenko. Now let's go find the protheans."  
  
2.  
The wind in the towers sounds like crying.  
  
"I don't think there are any protheans here... Sir." Sergeant Williams said as she led the team through the empty ruins. "I don't think there are any colonists left here either, despite what the jacket on Feros says."  
  
"Yeah, Zhu's Hope ain't much to write home about," Vega agreed as he nudged an empty box with his foot. "Those fat cats at Exo-Geni sure didn't get their money's worth on this one."  
  
The Normandy had docked at what passed for Zhu's Hope's spaceport—the tallest of all the remaining prothean megastructures that dotted Feros' surface—but there had only been automated telemetry systems, spitting vectors and callsigns out into the void.  
  
The spires were breathtakingly massive slabs of black, jutting through the grey sky, while the human settlement was little better than a shantytown bolted to the surface. Cautiously, the team picked their way through the wind-torn prefab cubicles, through dimly lit corridors puddled with stagnant water. The only human sounds were their own.  
  
Kaidan shifted uncomfortably in his borrowed armour, trying to keep up with the soldiers in front of him and simultaneously not lose Shepard behind him. The weird, semi-organic suit—which Liara had declared Definitely Prothean, Definitely Non-Infectous, and Definitely Worthy of Further Study—occasionally squirmed against the undersuit, making an unpleasant squelching sound. And for his part, Shepard kept stopping to peel off his glove and touch things, the glowing eyes of his featureless faceplate flickering in what Kaidan had begun to translate as sadness.  
  
"Shepard?" He watched Vega and Williams scout ahead, then offered his hand to the vanguard.  
  
"I can't breathe." Shepard's voice through the suit was freakishly modulated and thoroughly alien. But his body language was still human, defeated, as he rubbed his dirty fingertips on the shuddering suit. "I can hear the others, but there is so much... fear here. Choking and gasping and... layers of it. I can't tell them apart."  
  
"Stop touching things for a while." Kaidan gently helped him pull the glove back on, watching the suit slide protective plates over his fingers. "Focus on me, OK? Liara's back on the ship, trying to figure out what might have happened here, along with Traynor and the Captain. And I'm here with you. I won't leave you alone. You promised to not betray my trust, I'm not going to betray yours. You're safe, Shep."  
  
"Shep." The alien eyes warmed, gold from green. "I like that. I like that a lot." The wind howled through the towers and Kaidan shivered, squeezing Shepard's hand tight.  
  
"We found somethin' you guys are gonna want to see." Vega's voice cut through their comms. "Now."  
  
Kaidan hadn't expected to see vines, thick as his leg, creeping up the stairwells and laden with strange giant pods. Some were burst open, strewn on landings and others hung from the walls, some of which still sputtered with light sources kindled fifty thousand years before. Water trapped in the walls ran in grimy rivers between the suckers and he pulled his elbows in tighter, to avoid touching it. The growth hadn't come up as far as the colony, but everything below it looked as if it had been swallowed up ages ago.  
  
"Local flora?" Kaidan asked, cautiously prodding a vine. "I mean, I'm no botanist, but this seems a little extreme."  
  
"Feed me." Williams chuckled as she passed under a pod. "When I was in school, we did one of those classic plays—it was about this barbershop and an alien plant. I was Audrey." When Kaidan and the others merely looked at her she rolled her eyes with a groan. "Seriously, not one of you?"  
  
"I promise, I'll look it up when we get back, Gunny," Vega said and Kaidan was sure he saw the big man's chest puff up a bit under his hardsuit.  
  
"He likes her," Shepard said a bit too loud, and both Williams and Vega made uncomfortable coughing noises. "Also, make sure you keep your helmets on. This smells funny." He crouched by one of the massive pods. "Like dead things."  
  
"Sure th— Oh fuck me." Williams hissed softly, and the others hurried to her side, even as she brought her fist up to halt them.  
  
Kaidan held his breath as he looked down the landing. Scorch marks, fresh, peppered the walls, and the floor was littered with intricate mechanical parts. "Geth."  
  
"Somethin' did a number on the flashlight heads." Vega prodded one fragmented geth head with his toe, then moved on, cautiously picking his way down the overgrown stairs.  
  
"The vines are listening," Shepard said quietly. "We need to be—" He yanked Kaidan backwards with a shout as scrabbling figures dropped from the pods above them. "—careful!"  
  
Vega and Williams laid down fire in front, as Kaidan rent the ones appearing behind them with his biotics. "Shepard?" he called to the vanguard, who was standing perfectly still amongst the chaos. "Shepard."  
  
"Stop." Shepard said, voice soft but the tone undeniable. The creatures froze, compliant as he dragged one to him, twitching in a stasis field of searing green. It was humanoid, mouth gawping fitfully in Shepard's stasis field, mossy teeth clacking in a lichenous face.  
  
Vega crept closer, and tentatively reached out. "Shit. I think I know what happened to the colonists," he said, as he finally grabbed the thing's collar, revealing the Exo-Geni corporate logo on the shredded fabric.  
  
"Plants versus Zombies." Williams giggled, then let out a tight hiss of breath when no one else laughed. "So, what now?"  
  
Shepard ignored them . "Creeper. Who are you?" The suit's stained-glass wings reflected trembling shards of light across the horrific scene. "What have you done with the others?"  
  
The creeper's jaw unhinged with a hideous gargling sound. Shepard shook his head, and then, with the tiniest twitch of his fist, the thing imploded and plopped to the ground in a pile of rotting meat and fungus.  
  
"Well, that was disgusting," Kaidan said weakly.  
  
"It's downstairs. It has them, it has all of them," Shepard muttered, pushing past the group. "It didn't want the geth here. It just wants organics." He paused. "Go back to the Normandy. It's not safe here," he said, his suit's eyes burning like ice in the sun before the thunder of his charge knocked them back.  
  
"Not again!" Kaidan shouted at no one in particular. "I swear to God I'm putting a leash on him."  
  
  
  
**3.  
Into the deep, dark woods.**  
  
They fought their way down the overgrown stairs as quickly as they could, tripping and slipping amongst the shuddering vines and spasming creepers in their path.  
  
"Not to alarm anyone or anything," Vega said as he blew the head off another former colonist, "but is anyone else getting an environmental timer warning in their HUD?"  
  
"Yeah," Kaidan said tightly, suddenly afraid to breathe as he noticed the red lights in the corner of his vision. "So many micro-organisms, the vents are starting to clog."  
  
"How could they have missed this on the planetary survey?" Williams shot another creeper, struggling not to fall over the already-mouldering remains of a nearby geth.  
  
"Unless they accidentally released it during one of the archaeological digs." Kaidan pushed a series of vines out of the way, struggling to keep the twitching mass contained. "But, we need to hurry up and get Shepard and get out."  
  
"Do you smell that?" Williams said, then, voice soft. "It smells like violets. Oh... Oh, shit."  
  
"Shit!" Vega grabbed her as she started to falter. "I smell it too, it's in our suits," he said, voice weakening.  
  
"Biotic barrier's holding them at bay." Kaidan looked at the safety warning on his HUD. "Get yourselves back to the Normandy, to decon—I'll find Shepard and meet you back there." He couldn't smell anything but the faintly acrid tang of the recycled air in his helmet, but he swore he could feel the pull of Shepard's powers just a little further on.  
  
"No offence doc, but—" Vega stopped as Kaidan helped him to his feet. He sighed, then nodded. "Got it. We're pulling back. Good luck."  
  
Kaidan waited until Vega and Williams had retreated up the stairs before turning the full force of his biotics on the overgrowth of vines and animate corpses spread out below him. The shockwave cracked the ancient blocks, carved out a path through the fractal maze of plants and he followed the call itching at the back of his brain. "Shep!"  
  
Another level down, and the hum of power was nearly blinding. No more creepers rose up against him, and Kaidan froze in horror as he entered a long-empty plaza.  
  
Empty save for the gigantic pulsing growth, a green tumour that covered every flat surface with oozing pustules of sap. It glowed faintly, casting an oceanic light in the space that rippled in time with its ancient heartbeat. In the middle of it, Shepard hung, the prothean armour slipping off his undersuit in thick, grey tears.  
  
"Shepard!" Kaidan furiously searched his training, trying to find some use of his powers that could free the vanguard.  
  
Like a puppeteer, the monstrosity turned Shepard in it's tendrils. Delicate curls caressed his blissful face, slithered under the high collar. Kaidan could see them squirming under that second skin suit and he felt a shiver of nauseous fear in his belly. Shepard eyes stuttered open as they moved, but the voice was not his, disconnected from the obscene arch of his back.  
  
"The meat came here." The words ground out of Shepard's throat, and Kaidan inched forward. "Hiding from the Black Machines. So frightened, tiny things. The Old Growth is kind. Hid them away, bodies food and fertiliser. Souls bearing fruit." Shepard's voice broke and crackled under the strain of an inhuman amusement, the translucent boils on the walls shuddering in sympathetic mirth. "They thought help would come sooner. But the Old Growth remembers. For this one sings the same."  
  
Jerky and uncontrolled, Shepard's hands pawed at his chest. "The Old Growth is kind, keep this meat safe too, safe from the Black Machines." Shepard looked at Kaidan with the same face he'd had in the charge: beatific, lost in the throes of an unimaginable power.  
  
"Please, you can't..." Kaidan took another step through fluttering shadows. "He... We thought the protheans were here and..." He took a deep breath, feeling the sweat puddle in the boots of his borrowed hardsuit. "They are, aren't they? You say you kept them safe. For him. You kept their consciousness alive inside of you for the day when another would come, to use it against the Reapers, against the black machines." Kaidan took off his helmet, barrier shimmering blue against the brown of his skin. "They will consume you too, if we can't stop them."  
  
The air was hot and humid, thick with the scent of violets, of long-rotting meat. The pure ozone of biotics burned in the back of his throat. "Please, don't hurt him. We need him."  
  
Shepard's body stiffened, back arching in some obscene parody of passion. "The Old Growth... will keep you safe..." One hand reached out, and there was a spark of green in Shepard's eyes, a tiny twitch of a dimple. "Kaidan."  
  
Without hesitation, he met that hand. Their fingers twined and Kaidan felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, the hum in his nerves as Shepard charge-locked him. This time, he didn't try to fight it, simply let Shepard have the run of his biotics, let him weave threads of blue into the emerald maelstrom he summoned up, giving form and direction to the storm.  
  
Kaidan could hear the Old Growth howling in Shepard's brain, their linked powers looping through them all. It was a reave of monstrous proportions, and Shepard clung to him, holding Kaidan tight to his chest as the creature shredded around them in the hurricane of dark energy. All around, the creepers flailed and twitched, gaping mouths echoing the Old Growth's scream.  
  
'I will protect you,' one of them thought, piercing the roar.  
  
He wasn't sure it was over until Shepard's mouth was on his, and Kaidan didn't try to fight that either. They were, in that moment, one being, tangled with the Old Growth and the prothean souls it had long since devoured. They were Shepard and Kaidan Alenko, locked in a loop of shuddering memory and nameless ache.  
  
He could see the Reapers as Shepard did, as the protheans had: nightmare shapes darkening the sky with their numbers. He could see the grasping claws and the horror. And he could feel the hope the ancient ones still had. The hope Shepard now carried in him millennia hence. The hope that, this time, they would survive.  
  
The stone floor was soft with moss, and Shepard was a graceful slice of black and white and red against it. Kaidan pushed him down, random bits of the Old Growth's consciousness flaring out behind his eyes like so many fireworks as they kissed—he felt he might drown in it. Shepard's mouth yielded to his easily, sharing breath as much as heat. The vanguard's hands were frantic, blindly reaching for the latches to release Kaidan's armour, finding the undersuit beneath the loosening plates, and searching for the flesh beneath that.  
  
Shepard ground against him, fingers now gripping Kaidan's hair ferociously, holding him where Kaidan's lips dragged against his throat, feeling the pulse hammering beneath the thin skin. He smelled of ozone and musk and something so intoxicating that he wondered briefly if that was the last ghost of the Prothean Empire in his sweat.  
  
"...pard? Alenko?!" A voice crackled in the comm in Kaidan's discarded helmet, and they both paused. Beneath him, Shepard's pale eyes were huge and wild. He tried to ignore it, pressing Shepard's wrists against the floor.  
  
"I know where we need to go," the vanguard whispered hoarsely. Kaidan slowly released him, and one hand stroked his cheek. "The last home. The refuge hidden at the heart of the galaxy."  
  
  
**4.  
The plan, interrupted.**  
  
"Do the two of you realise how incredibly stupid that was?" Anderson's voice never rose, but the tone made his anger implicitly clear.  
  
"We're fine," Kaidan said, wincing as the Normandy's doctor, Chakwas, took a tissue sample. The medbay was small, but tidy, and every few moments, Anderson filled up a cup with water from a nearby dispenser and chugged it. The sound, the insistent trickle of water, was beginning to get to Kaidan. He shook his head and focused on Shepard.  
  
"Better than," Shepard said, fidgeting. "When the Old Growth devoured the protheans, it took everything. I took all of that when it was molesting me. So, the visions make sense now." He paused. "I have the memories it had."  
  
Doctor Chakwas stuck him with another needle, harder than was strictly necessary. "You were physically and mentally assaulted by an alien plant creature of unknown age and origin, Shepard. That was incredibly..." She made a vague gesture. "…irresponsible."  
  
"It wasn't my intention. And I swear I'm not delusional." Shepard pouted, running his hand over the cot. He yanked it back, and looked at his fingers with a concerned twist of his mouth "Also, you and Adams… You really should..."  
  
Chakwas' eyes widened, but Liara interrupted before he could go on with whatever embarrassing information he'd read from the medbay.  
  
"He's not. The refuge Shepard spoke of, it corresponds to a place we call Ilos. It's referenced in the few late-period prothean texts we've been able to translate. A binary star system with three worlds," Liara said from the doorway. "Scholars have long considered it to be the prothean equivalent of the afterlife, but Shepard's visions imply it's a real place."  
  
"It is real. The protheans on Feros didn't imagine it to be a mythical place. It was a real destination for them." Shepard paced. "A place safe from the Reapers. But the Old Growth took them before they could get there." He pushed his hair back with a groan. "They watched their worlds burn under the Reapers, their people devoured. And the same thing is going to happen to us if we don't get to Ilos. There's something there that can save us."  
  
"If there was a mass relay to Ilos, it was lost thousands of years ago," Liara interrupted. "No research team has ever been able to find a relay within light years of the location the stories indicate."  
  
"No!" Shepard snapped, stilling when Kaidan put a gentle hand on his arm. "No, I can find it, I'm sure."  
  
"It doesn't matter right now, anyway." Anderson quieted them all. "We're being ordered to the Citadel—where we should have been days ago, before I agreed to this detour."  
  
"Ah. Yeah, you'd said something about a dead SPECTRE." Kaidan looked around at the tight faces.  
  
"We have a dead turian in the freezer." Doctor Chakwas sighed, jerking her thumb to the back of the medbay. "And the council rightfully wants answers."  
  
"He was overseeing our shakedown cruise when we were summoned to bring him to investigate a situation at Eden Prime. Our ground team, led by Sergeant Williams, went with him. Right before his comms went dead, we heard him shout what we think was the name of Saren Arterius, another turian SPECTRE." There was a bitter edge to Anderson's words. "We didn't get a chance to investigate further because of the geth and that giant... the Reaper."  
  
"I swear I saw another turian fleeing, right after that prothean thing blew up, sir," Williams said from her cot, the mask on her face still cleaning the alien spores from her lungs. "It had to have been Arterius."  
  
"So, the council wants explanations, and the Alliance wants us to play nice." Anderson sat on the edge of the doctor's desk.  
  
"Perfect!" Shepard squeezed Kaidan's hand. "I'll explain everything to the Council. They'll have to help us, once they understand what happened to the protheans!" His smile dimmed as he looked around the room. "What?"  
  
"I'm not sure..." Anderson sighed. "No, you know what? It can't make things any worse than they are right now." He laughed ruefully. "Doctor Alenko, you might be a little longer getting back to Grissom."  
  
"It's ok, Captain." Kaidan shook his head. "This has been the most interesting job I've had in my life so far. I can't wait to see what happens next."  
  
  
  
**5.  
SERPENT NEBULA/WIDOW SYSTEM/THE CITADEL - An unexpected detour into the legal system occurs.**  
  
"You don't understand!" Shepard shouted from under the growing pile of C-Sec officers. "You have to help us get to Ilos!"  
  
The council chamber was a place of beauty. Flowering trees waved softly over shimmering pools reflecting the light of the nebula. Waterfalls fell from a great height to splash over the rounded stones at their bases, places of contemplation for those waiting their turn before the Council.  
  
And every single one of those waiting was trying their best not to look directly at the spectacle happening before them.  
  
The turian councilor was unconscious, the salarian nursing a black eye, and the human ambassador was screaming at the asari about the situation while Shepard bit one officer in the face and kicked another in the groin in his feral bid for freedom.  
  
Kaidan sat quietly, hands cuffed behind him, as an Alliance official gave Anderson a dressing-down beside him. In the background, a medic attempted to sedate Shepard with little success. His own knuckles ached from where they'd impacted with the salarian's face.  
  
It had gone from poorly-recieved to utterly ridiculous the moment the turian councillor had made a crack about fairy tales and then insulted Anderson and Kaidan for enabling a madman. Shepard had charged the turian, and the next thing he knew, he was peeling the salarian off the vanguard's back. He hadn't actually meant to punch them.  
  
Underneath the dogpile, Shepard made some garbled threat as the drugs took effect, and Kaidan sighed. He had not expected his first visit to the Citadel to include jail.  
  
"Do I get one phone call?" Kaidan asked as two grim-faced turians dragged him behind Shepard's twitching form.  
  
"A lawyer will be provided to you," the officer said as he dumped them in the holding cell. "Humans. Ugh." A quarian in a purple suit squeaked and shrank back as the two men stumbled in. In another corner, a krogan snored loudly. The cell was grey and featureless except for a vid screen in the wall playing the recent news of Shepard's unintended assault on the heart of galactic politics.  
  
"Fug it, I'm jus charge out," Shepard mumbled, face sliding along the wall. "Inna sec."  
  
"So... What are you in for?" The quarian inched towards them cautiously, suit giving a pleasant reverb to her voice.  
  
"Shepard punched out the turian councillor and no one believes that we're all going to be destroyed by giant ancient space machine gods." Kaidan made a vague, claw-handed gesture as the drooling vanguard sprawled on his shoulder. "I'm Kaidan, by the way. I used to be a doctor."  
  
"Your giant ancient space machine gods wouldn't happen to be huge black spaceships with claws, would they?" She leaned forward, glowing eyes narrowing behind her visor. "Because I saw one on Haestrom with a turian and some geth." She claw-handed back at him. "It was farking huge. I'm on my pilgrimage, and I was working with a research team there. It was supposed to be easy, but I barely escaped with my life. I may have commandeered someone's freighter and forced them to come here so I could tell someone, and I got locked up!" She flailed, bouncing on her narrow cot. "Piracy, can you believe it? Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."  
  
"See, she knows. We gotta get outta here." Shepard wiped the drool off his face as he shook off the sedative. He stood up, then immedately flopped back down and fixed her with a bright gaze "So, Saren was the turian on Eden Prime.. with the Reaper. So then he shows up on..?"  
  
"Haestrom." Tali shrugged. "It's a piece of shit planet. I was just there providing tech support to a team investigating some prothean ruins."  
  
"Haestrom. There were ruins on Eden Prime, ruins on Feros. He's looking for something. Something for that Reaper." Shepard started to flail, then sank back. "We have to get someone to listen."  
  
"No one's going to. Anderson's under house arrest, we're in the middle of a diplomatic shitstorm, and they're blaming everything on the geth." Kaidan patted his head gently.  
  
"Oh, hey Tali, I got you a dextro snack bar," an officer said as he approached the plasma-field barrier to the cell. "Your lawyer should be here tomorrow. Maybe. I got you guys some human... Food things, too." The turian scratched at the blue paint on his face plates. "Looks kind of gross, sorry."  
  
"Garrus, they saw the same ship I did." Tali approached the barrier. "I know you said you believe me, so..."  
  
"Tali, you hijacked a ship. You know I can't let you out." The turian's mandibles twitched fitfully as he opened a passage to slip the food in. "And you two, you punched out some councilors, really?"  
  
"Garrus, right?" Shepard quickly stumbled over to the officer, grabbing his hands before he could pull them back. Kaidan watched the spark light behind his eyes, and the food clattered to the cell floor as the air stirred with a faint chatter of static electricity. "You want to do something with your life, something that has meaning to you, not just… what you hope will make your father finally proud of you."  
  
Garrus yanked his hands free, face plates contorting in surprise. "How..?"  
  
"Believe it or not, I've been rewired to be part prothean, I kind of read minds and I'm really trying to stop ancient unstoppable machine gods from destroying all life in the galaxy like they did fifty thousand years ago." Shepard shrugged, flopped to the floor, then picked up a protein bar. He lobbed one to Kaidan, then bit through the wrapper on the other. "Help me, Garrus Vakarian."  
  
"What can I do?" Garrus sat down heavily opposite them. "I'm a junior officer, I have no clearance, and if let you out, my career is over."  
  
Shepard looked up and down the hallway as Garrus spoke, nodding to himself.  
  
"Simple, we're gonna overpower you, and take you hostage." The krogan startled them all, and Kaidan watched as he stood up, massive bulk unfolding. "What? I ain't stayin' in here if there's gonna be a jailbreak."  
  
"What are you in for?" Kaidan asked with a nervous laugh.  
  
"I broke a bunch'a heads at a bar." The krogan made a nasty sound. "I'm small potatoes compared to you lot, but it's kind of a slow day. So, what d'ya say, Vakarian? You don't even like it here. You told me that the last time they brought me in."  
  
"I guess, I could—waugh!" Garrus' words were cut short by the sudden flare of green thunder that filled the cell. Shepard vanished into the charge, reappearing outside the cell, tumbling down the empty corridor over the startled turian.  
  
"Working on control, promise," Shepard said, scowling as the alarms went off around them. "Kaidan, where do we go?" He clapped his hands over his ears, looking at Kaidan expectantly.  
  
"Why does everyone always think i know what to do?" Kaidan rubbed his face. "OK. Anderson's under house arrest. We just find his apartment in the wards, and go there, I guess?" Kaidan looked at the assemblage as Garrus opened the cell, still trembling from Shepard's attack. "Kalyee's never gonna believe this."  
  
  
**6.  
a quest renewed.**  
  
"You're right. I don't believe this." Director Sanders rubbed her face, awoken from a sound sleep at Grissom by the call from Anderson.  
  
"Don't worry about the guards, they're gonna wake up down at the docks with a headache," Shepard said pleasantly as he and the krogan, Wrex, helped themselves to the contents of Anderson's fridge.  
  
"Well, if I leave here, it'll be worse for everyone." Anderson sat back and Kaidan watched him from his perch on the edge of the luxurious couch. The place was enormous, nicer even than the gilded cage Shepard had been kept in on Terra Nova—sprawling and open, with crackling fireplaces, a gleaming curtain of water and elegant, abstract art wherever he looked. Kaidan was sure he saw Kaylee's aesthetic in the decor. He patted a collection of stone balls like the ones in her office and munched on a plate of crackers Shepard shoved in front of him.  
  
"We're fugitives now, sorry." Kaidan shrugged and his boss took a dramatic swig of coffee.  
  
"I'm a hostage." Garrus said brightly, and Tali elbowed him.  
  
"We're here to help, and that should clear all of our names, if we succeed," she added.  
  
"Everyone but Wrex. He was in for assault charges unrelated to me beating up the council," Shepard said around a mouthful of salami. He handed a link to Kaidan and sat beside him. "So, how do we get a ship to go to Ilos? Because that's where the prothean memories all point to. That's where they fled the Reapers, so there has to be a way to stop them there, right?"  
  
Kaidan watched, unaccountably uncomfortable as Anderson and Kaylee exchanged a silent look before the captain quickly tapped out a series of codes into his omnitool. "Kaidan. Kaylee trusts you, so I have no choice but to. I've just sent you the Normandy's access codes. You'll be able to get her out of drydock with those, as long as you can get the moorings released. That part I can't help you with. And Joker and some of the others will meet you there." He scanned a message quickly. "They'll be your—" He looked significantly at Garrus. "—hostages, I suppose, like Officer Vakarian here."  
  
"We'll bring them back safely, sir." Shepard offered his gloved hand to Anderson. "Thank you."  
  
"If I hadn't seen what happened on Eden Prime, and if I hadn't seen what happened on Elysium, I might not be so inclined," Anderson said. "But we all have our part to play. Play yours for us all, son." He shook Shepard's hand briskly, and the vanguard smiled.  
  
Kaidan's gaze went back to his superior's as Shepard and Anderson spoke further. "Ma'am."  
  
"Keep him safe, Kaidan." She nodded. "I have contacts that are starting to hear about more attacks by geth and their mysterious dreadnought, so this problem is going to get worse before it gets better, I'm afraid."  
  
"I promised I would," Kaidan said firmly.  
  
"Yeah, great, great." Wrex rumbled. "Let's go steal us a spaceship, already, alright? I gotta get off the Citadel. Don't wanna end up back in the slammer."  
  
"You don't have to come with us, Wrex," Shepard said.  
  
"Meh. I'm old. Might as well go do something new before I end up gummin' ryncol jelly an' itchin' my quads at strangers." The krogan laughed again, and Kaidan's spine crawled from the sound.  
  
Shepard was unfazed, and grabbed them both by the arm. "We won't let you down, sir."  
  
Kaidan hadn't meant to look back as they left, but the expression that both Captain Anderson and Director Sanders had on their faces gave him a worse chill than Wrex's evil laugh. 'We all have our part to play,' he reminded himself as Tali cheerfully hotwired a cab. It had always been comforting when Kaylee said it.  
  
He wasn't sure why it wasn't now.  
  
  
**7.  
Grand Theft Normandy**  
  
The dock was nearly deserted, lights dimmed for the Citadel's night cycle and quiet except for the footsteps of the people quietly gathering.  
  
Kaidan recognised the pilot—a weedy, pallid little man with a cane—and the co-pilot—tall, dark and handsome in all the most primal senses of the phrase—from their earlier voyage. He was surprised to see Williams and Vega there, as well as Chakwas and others.  
  
"Are you all sure you want to do this?" Kaidan asked as he punched the codes into the Normandy's airlock.  
  
"I'm your security detail, so, yeah." Vega folded his arms. "I take that very seriously."  
  
"Anderson's on the hook for that SPECTRE's death." The pilot snorted. "Shit, we're all on the hook for that. An' we all decided we're gonna back him up and find out what the hell's going on."  
  
"Besides." The co-pilot laughed. "Joker here's afraid someone else is going to fly his baby."  
  
"Shut up, Cortez." Joker pulled his hat down. "If anyone's gonna fly her anywhere, it's gonna be me. Even if it's for you and Commander Crazypants over there on a mission to basically nowhere."  
  
"Just Lieutenant, but thank you for the promotion." Shepard waved absently as he and Wrex struggled to open the manual controls for the mooring arms. Tali brought up a drone and went to work.  
  
"With freakishly good hearing. Awesome." Joker sighed as the arms began to bang and creak. "So, we doing this or what?"  
  
Kaidan entered the last code and the door hissed open. "We're doing this."  
  
"Wait!" They turned to see Liara rushing down the ramp, clutching her briefcase. Datapads clattered out of her hands onto the ground. "Oh thank the goddess, when Captain Anderson called me, I was sure I'd miss you all! I made calls and I have so much new information for..."  
  
There was a loud bang as Wrex pulled another housing off, and the dock's lights began to flash red, a klaxon ringing off the metallic walls.  
  
"Information later, run now!" Garrus shouted over her, his stony crest twitching as he looked through the accessway. "A lot of angry coworkers of mine are headed this way, we should go!"  
  
"Shit. I don't do running." Joker cursed as he limped into the ship. Cortez jogged ahead of him to start the preflight and the rest of the crew filtered in as quickly as they could.  
  
"Wrex and I'll hold them off." Shepard reached out for Kaidan and squeezed his hand. "You get on board where it's safe."  
  
"You're kidding, right?" Kaidan released him to help Liara gather her things. "I'm going to—"  
  
"Get yer ass on that ship, kid." Wrex looked down at him, the scars on his reptilian face pulling it into a perpetual sneer. "I wanna see what the baby vanguard here can do."  
  
"I'll be fine, Doc," Shepard whispered, lips brushing Kaidan's. "I'm a vanguard. This is what I was made to do."  
  
"Be careful, then... Shep." Kaidan let the kiss linger for a moment, then hurried Liara with the others into the Normandy's airlock. Shepard and the krogan vanished into their respective thunderclaps as warning lights turned the dock ominously red. "Shit. Joker, how long till we can launch?"  
  
"Finishing preflight now. As long as the arms release, we're good." The pilot's hands danced over the controls. "We all got our parts t'play, and this one is mine."  
  
"They'll release. I've got remote access." Tali added from a nearby station. "But Shepard and Wrex better hurry."  
  
The monitors showed a swarm of C-sec officers, tossed about like careless children's toys in the wake of the storm the two had unleashed on the dock. "Shepard!" Kaidan yelled into the comms, hoping he'd be heard. "We have to go now."  
  
The relief as he saw them retreat was profound, and they clambered into the lock just as the Normandy began to back out. But her motion was cut short with a massive jerk, sending them toppling. "What happened?"  
  
"Arm number 3 won't release. It's jammed." Tali typed furiously into a terminal. "It's a mechanical malfunction, I can't override it."  
  
"Be right back." Shepard jogged over to the airlock.  
  
"Shepard, they're going to kill you." Kaidan winced at the sound of shots pinging off the Normandy's hull. "Or at least put you back into— I'll go."  
  
"You saw the same things I did back there, with the Old Growth." Shepard leaned into him with a laugh. "You can get them there if something happens to me. But trust me, ok?"  
  
"I trust you." Kaidan sighed. "Go. Hurry."  
  
With gritted teeth, Kaidan and the others watched Shepard dance between the C-sec fire, along the length of the mooring arm. "We gotta go." Joker chanted over and over as the proximity sensors showed police cruisers closing in.  
  
There was a massive lurch as Shepard shattered the couplings with his biotics, and Joker pulled the frigate back as quickly as he could. "We can't leave him here!" Kaidan grabbed the seat, trying to get Joker to stop.  
  
"We can't stay here, Anderson's orders, man," Joker shot back.  
  
"Shepard!" Kaidan shouted at the monitors. He felt the shiver up his spine as Shepard looked directly at him. "Oh, no. no. Open space, open space," Kaidan began to chant, scrambling out to the Normandy's CIC. "Where's the biggest open space in the ship?"  
  
"Shuttle bay!" Cortez called after him. "Down the lift!"  
  
Panicking, Kaidan pounded the lift button. He could feel the static charge building on his skin, and knowing Shepard was in dire danger only made it worse. He barely made it into the shuttle bay as the charge struck, scattering weapons and personnel with the booming displacement of air. Shepard caught himself as he reappeared this time, landing at Kaidan's feet with a graceful roll.  
  
Panting, he straightened. "I have your scent, Kaidan Alenko. I can find you anywhere." He laughed and hugged Kaidan tightly. "Thank you."  
  
"You idiot," Kaidan said, but he didn't let him go until they were well away from the Citadel. "You better always find me."  
  
**~~~~**  
  


  
**PART 3: HAWKING ETA/THORNE SYSTEM.  
  
  
1.  
In the shadow of a dead god.**  
  
"Holy fucking shit," Joker breathed as the tiny frigate ghosted along a lightless hull bigger than some cities.  
  
The Normandy had fled the Citadel, skipping relay to relay partially to deter anyone from following them into the lawless wilds of the Omega region, but also because Shepard and Liara had come up with a seemingly incomprehensible set of coordinates in Hawking Eta, cobbled together from garbled memory and questionably-translated texts.  
  
They'd limped, nearly devoid of fuel, to the automated depot in orbit around Chandrasehkar, and had made the rest of the cruise at relatively low speeds, when long-range scans had pinged the monstrous corpse of a ship.  
  
Kaidan was not even a little bit surprised that Shepard had immediately wanted to board it.  
  
"I suppose it's comforting to know these things can be killed." Kaidan closed out his hastily dictated report to Kaylee. They were well away from any normal comm beacons, and he had no idea when she or Captain Anderson would receive the update.  
  
"I still want to go aboard it." Shepard leaned on the observation bay window as Joker brought the Normandy around in another exploratory pass.  
  
"If they thought letting you 'interface,'" Kaidan made an overly-dramatic set of air quotes as Shepard pushed away from the window to crouch near him again, "with the Old Growth was a bad idea, what do you think Anderson's going to say if I let you just get on board the giant ancient death god machine?"  
  
The vanguard laid his head on Kaidan's knee with a whuff. "You're always thinking of water. Did you live by the ocean?" he abruptly asked. "You're hard to read, sometimes."  
  
Kaidan stroked his hair. "I lived overlooking a bay on Earth. In Canada, North America. Ever go there?"  
  
"Nah. Got offworld as soon as I was able with enlistment." Shepard laughed ruefully. "I think i really need to get on board that Reaper, Doc. It's dead, but it's dreaming. "  
  
Kaidan brushed back an unruly, rusty lock and sighed as Shepard looked up at him. "You're a monster with those puppy eyes." He gently knocked Shepard on the forehead. "If nothing else, maybe an autopsy will help us figure out what we're dealing with." He barely finished before Shepard was in his lap, gloved hands cradling his face, a vanguard's forehead pressed to his own.  
  
"Shepard. Shep," Kaidan croaked out, but it fell flat. Feros had made a mockery of his self-control, and only the constant frantic pace of the last several days had kept him from giving in to the want the Old Growth had dragged to the surface. Shepard had gotten into his defences from the moment they'd met, and now his hands traced along the sleek black waist of Shepard's suit like they had always belonged there. "I'm..."  
  
"My Doctor, I know," Shepard murmured against Kaidan's lips, his hips moving in a frustratingly slow tease. "Kaidan, please."  
  
"Alenko, Shepard, you need to get your butts up here." Joker's timing couldn't have been worse—or better. Kaidan sighed. It had been just as Shepard's hand guided Kaidan's to the zipper of his suit, the slow grind exposing inches of his skin before the pilot's voice barked through the comm.  
  
"You did that deliberately," Shepard said, and Kaidan couldn't tell if it was something he'd sensed or was just an educated guess.  
  
The pilot's snort of laughter all but confirmed it.  
  
  
**2.  
Gallows humour.**  
  
"I saw it as Joker made that last pass." The comm officer, Traynor, brought up a screen in the cramped conference area. "It's a human ship attached to the reaper." She shoved a bunch of Liara's datapads aside, and the rest of the team jostled for a view.  
  
"That logo." Vega reached over and tapped the screen. The gold and black shape on the hull was unmistakeable. "Cerberus. Just like at Hendrix."  
  
"I don't get it." Shepard paced. "Why did Cerberus want me in the first place? Are we at odds? Shouldn't we be on the same side here?"  
  
"We got so caught up, I never got Anderson to explain if he knew what happened back there." Kaidan rubbed his face. "We're still out of comms, so I guess you get your wish. We have to check this out."  
  
Shepard's little whoop of victory was cut short by the concerned mumbling around him. "I promise, I'm not going to make any trouble. You have to let me go."  
  
"Garrus, you can shoot him if he runs off again, got it?" Vega huffed, folding his arms. "Shepard, you know I respect you man, but…"  
  
"No Garrus. No shooting anyone," Kaidan countered, but the mood was already lightening as the turian promised a flesh wound.  
  
"Three teams." Shepard quickly spoke up, and Kaidan prayed it wouldn't be a repeat of the elevator incident. "Liara, Tali—you do whatever you have to to get samples of that thing. Wrex, you cover them."  
  
Wrex chuckled. "Ladies, yer in good hands."  
  
"No one is ever going to believe my pilgrimage story." Tali shook her head as Wrex slapped her on the back.  
  
"Williams, take Garrus and see what you can pull for Traynor from the Cerberus ship. Vega, you and Doc—since you're my security staff—get to come with me into the belly of the beast." Shepard looked around the room. "Come on, people. I don't think any of us want to linger here too long."  
  
"I almost forget you're the man that rallied the troops at Elysium, sometimes." Kaidan nudged him and Shepard's serious mask fell away as the team scattered. "You really are good at that."  
  
"I had to be." Shepard shrugged, fingers briefly twining with Kaidan's as they filed out to suit up. "... sometimes it even works out."  
  
  
**3.  
Things that go bump in the night.**  
  
The Cerberus cruiser looked like a war zone, and Kaidan's breath was too loud in the silence of his helmet as they cautiously stepped over broken bodies and shattered datapads. One researcher was curled around a gleaming black ball, and he crouched next to it.  
  
"You know what a leitmotif is?" he asked Shepard as he straightened. His head hurt and there was white noise washing in gentle tides over his comm.  
  
"No, but I didn't have the most comprehensive education." The vanguard's alien suit shuddered, as if in revulsion, as they approached the airlock.  
  
"It's a recurrent theme associated with a particular person." Liara shouldered her kit, tense as the door clanged open. "Asari music and literature has similar concepts. For instance, Shepard, yours would be..." She paused as they stepped into the wildly flickering lights of the access tube. "Heavy drums and out of tune keyboards, I think, to symbolise your inherently unpredictable nature."  
  
"That hurts." Shepard took up a place by the side of the final doorway as Vega opened it. "I'm very predictable."  
  
The airlock ground open and they froze as one. The space it opened into was not simply dark, it was abyssal - featureless and black except for painfully faint lines of light that occasionally ran along the floor. "We do not want to stay here too long." Shepard shifted uncomfortably, and Kaidan watched as his suit visibly echoed it. "It's dead but it's still dreaming."  
  
"We'll start sampling." Liara nodded briskly as she and Tali began to pull out equipment. "Don't go far."  
  
"I think I just peed myself a little bit." Vega muttered as they inched forward, the darkness swallowing up their torchlight. "...Do you guys hear that? It's like a humming sound. You hear that, right?"  
  
"There's light up ahead." Kaidan squinted. "I think." His chest hurt and his lungs burned, even though the HUD showed nothing but green lights for the armour's environmentals. It was dead silent, even their footsteps devoured in the dark.  
  
"I think... I think we found the rest of the crew," Shepard whispered softly, pausing them in the corridor. Liara and Tali were lost behind them in the dark, and the faint light flickering ahead seemed impossibly far away. Carefully, he turned his torch to the floor, revealing what he'd just stepped on.  
  
Vega knelt, casting his light over the scattered bodies—flesh and bone tangled up with synthetics. "Look. Geth, too." He swept the beam ahead. "Five or six of them, maybe fifteen humans."  
  
"The ones on Feros were black. These... aren't." Kaidan gingerly nudged one. "It's silver."  
  
Shepard stepped amongst the remains, kneeling at the source of the light they'd seen. "One's still alive," he said as he gently gathered up the ruined synthetic.  
  
"Shepard, don't. They're—" Vega's concerns were cut off by a garbled squeal of static and noise as the geth's light flickered.  
  
"We... are not... your enemy." The voice first warbled in their headpieces, but then, ruined vocal modulators came online to repeat it. "We could not save... the organics."  
  
"We're going to get you out of here, OK?" Shepard said kindly, waving Vega over to help. "My name is Shepard. What's yours?"  
  
"We do not have a name. We are a consensus of programs sharing this mobile platform." The geth's voice screeched and popped before the tone dropped sharply at the end. "You are not human, not like these."  
  
"Sort of. And how about your name is Legion for now, for you contain many." Shepard said and the geth's faceplate rose and flexed. Kaidan almost laughed at how quizzical it looked. "It would help to have a name in dealing with... organics."  
  
"That is acceptable. You may call us Legion." It was hard to tell but the geth sounded almost pleased. "This place is not safe."  
  
"We know. You can tell us about it back at the Normandy." Shepard pulled off his glove and Kaidan had an immediate, irrational surge of terror in his gut.  
  
"Shepard, no. No. Don't touch this." He grabbed Shepard's arm and Legion made a squeaking whine as punctuation as it slumped against Vega, actuators in its legs refusing to work correctly.  
  
"It's all good, man." Shepard said in his best Vega impression, and Kaidan tasted rising bile as the vanguard shook his hand off and pressed his own against the featureless black of the walls. "It'll be like the Old Growth, and..."  
  
Kaidan dragged him away the very second Shepard began to seize, the vanguard's smaller form stiffening in a painful arch. He screamed, the suit pulling away in its own terror, leaving Shepard exposed in the nearly airless environment.  
  
The convulsions began a second later, biotics flaring in a searing burst of green. The discarded torches and broken hardsuits of the dead researchers powered up in the first wave, the destroyed geth twitching to life in the next.  
  
"Oh god, we gotta go, we gotta go," Vega chanted as the bodies began to move in sickly light. "We have to go."  
  
"Consensus agreed," Legion warbled as they backed away. "No data."  
  
"Shepard." Kaidan fought to keep him in a biotic field, trying to trap what little atmosphere he could, but the blue tinge to the vanguard's face was not entirely from the glow of their powers. Stasis seemed cruel but it was the only way he could override the malfunctioning signals in Shepard's nerves, pulling him back as the abominations dragged themselves forward.  
  
Some lurched to their feet, and there was a humming in his comms, over the white noise and Vega's shouts. He pulled the stasis field close to him.  
  
Vega was shouting at Wrex and the others to fall back. He didn't take the time to complain as Legion took his sidearm and began firing at the creeping husks with unerring accuracy. In all of this, Shepard slowly turned to Kaidan, even through the force of his stasis. His eyes were rolled back, and his voice was torn from his chest like the blood dribbling from his nose, his lips, his eyes, so different from when the Old Growth had spoken from him.  
  
"The harbinger of your salvation," Shepard choked out before a wave swallowed them both and Kaidan lost the light.  
  
  
**4.  
There are no good ideas here.**  
  
He was drowning in the dark with no escape. There was no floor, no walls, just black water, dragging him under. Kaidan flailed and gasped and sat up with a wheeze, looking around the Normandy's neat little medbay.  
  
He gasped, coughing. "What happened?" One hand pawed ineffectually at his undersuit, reaching for a constriction that was no longer there.  
  
"You blacked out from the strain of trying to contain Shepard's seizure." Doctor Chakwas handed him a glass of water and he tried to steady it in his shaking hands. "Wrex carried you both back during the retreat. From... he and James are saying it was zombies."  
  
"It's a long story." Kaidan flopped back down, groaning. Shepard lay on the next cot, ashy beneath his oxygen mask. "Is he going to be ok?" Kaidan reached out, fingertips just reaching the edge of the thin sheet.  
  
"You probably saved him by putting him into stasis." She sighed, pulling a bottle out from her desk. "But even with the data I've gotten from Doctor Michel at Hendrix, it's hard to say what his vitals should actually be." Chakwas poured out a drink, then looked hard at it. "All of us are flying blind here."  
  
"Not that blind." Shepard rasped, hand reaching blindly for Kaidan's as he sat up with a moan. "Things just weren't clear before."  
  
"You're ok?" Kaidan fought the tangle of his sheets to catch him as Shepard clung to the bedframe.  
  
"You were right, it was a bad idea. Everything tastes like burnt rubber." Shepard wobbled, then grasped Kaidan's arm. "Thank you. I don't really deserve... you." He sighed. "Let's get everyone together, I do not wanna have to tell this more than once."  
  
Kaidan gently rapped him on the skull as he helped Shepard to his feet. "Job security." He laughed.  
  
Shepard was still chuckling as they made their way to the conference table. Liara had spread out again, and he pushed a few pads aside to sit on the edge of the table. "So, sorry for the zombies," he said and the others groaned. "Please tell me we got some info from this beyond the horror show."  
  
"Cerberus knew about Ilos." Traynor swept a screen before them. "They were looking for the relay as well, when they came across the Reaper.  
  
"We have a leak somewhere." Williams folded her arms.  
  
"You know, I don't even care at this moment." Shepard rubbed his eyes. Kaidan got the distinct impression though, that he was doing it specifically to not look at him. "Cerberus is the least of our worries, so we'll deal with that later. Did they at least have any insights on our data that we don't?"  
  
"Actually, yes." Liara cleared her throat. "Shepard's insistent belief that Ilos is a real place, and not the prothean afterlife... it made me question some of the other translations that asari scholars have long believed religious hymns. Cerberus had the same conclusions." She took over Traynor's screen, bringing up a wall of prothean text with asari notations. "There are several late-era—what probably coincides with the destruction of their society by the Reapers—hymns to something translated as 'the well of souls'. Cerberus translated it more literally: 'The Crucible.'"  
  
"What the hell is it?" Wrex rumbled from the back and Liara eagerly moved the image around.  
  
"I think... based on the texts that talk about how it will drive back death and darkness, a gift from the ancients... I think it's a weapon—a weapon that was handed down to them from another culture." She nodded firmly. "And I think it's on Ilos."  
  
"The Reaper was going to Ilos. It didn't call it that, but where it was going... out of all the noise and the…" Shepard scrubbed his hand over his face again. "I feel like I swallowed an ocean of garbage. I don't want to make too much sense of it. But it knew where Ilos was, before it died. Two suns with three worlds, and I think Liara's right: it was going there to get this weapon. To stop it. But something was waiting for it. And killed it, and if the Crucible is what did that? Then we can kill the one that's here causing havoc and stop the rest from coming. Because there are so many of them. I could hear their..." He looked off in the distance. "They're coming and they're singing in the dark, these... Black Machines."  
  
"They're not entirely machines, either," Tali said as she and Liara exchanged a glance. Beside the quarian, Legion sat quietly. "They're... something I've never seen before. A fusion of biomatter, nanotech and... things I've never seen. And our new friend was able to confirm it."  
  
"The Creator is correct." Legion intoned, absently working on a leg actuator with a series of tiny tools as it spoke. "Their data reveals a biosynthetic hybrid organism. When the Old Machines came to Rannoch, it called for the geth to join it on its mission. It spoke through a turian, claimed we would be caretakers, protectors of organic life from the Leviathan. To raise them up in perfect synthesis. Many geth fell from consensus, followed." It paused, faceplates folding inward in a simulacra of concern. "We were built by the Creators to be helpers."  
  
'Leviathan.' Kaidan shifted with a wave of white noise under the chatter of voices. Tali was talking about the geth, Liara and Traynor digging through the interminable piles of datapads, pulling out some relevant historical factoid. Vega and Williams were arguing matters of practicality.  
  
'Protect organic life from the Leviathan.' He wished he was back in Kaylee's office. It was the last time anything had made any real sense to him. "The Reapers... the harbinger of your salvation," Kaidan said, too loudly for his own ears. "That's what you said during your seizure."  
  
"Here's a reference to something that translates closely." The comm officer threw up an image of an ancient asari tablet. "It's an asari myth about a benevolent god, deep in the ocean of stars, who gave Athame a magical sword."  
  
"None of this does us any good if we can't find Ilos. And we can't find Ilos without the relay, which isn't where it's supposed to be." Vega threw up his hands.  
  
"What if it drifted?" Garrus raised a hand, and brought up the nav charts. "Look, when you shoot something in space, there's nothing acting on it to stop it, unless it hits something. Shepard and Liara's stories say the relay orbited a star. There's no star there, but there IS the remains of one. If it blew, it might have pushed the relay out of orbit. It probably has just been drifting for thousands of years."  
  
"That's really good, Garrus," Shepard said as Traynor sent the info up to Joker.  
  
"You learn a lot about blowing stuff up in the turian military." Garrus shrugged. "It's kind of a cultural thing. We really, REALLY like blowing stuff up."  
  
Their nattering drew out into a hum, and all he saw was Shepard's eyes, hard and pale and fixed on him.  
  
  
**~~~~**  
  
**PART 4: PANGAEA EXPANSE/REFUGE/ILOS.  
  
1.  
A storm below mirrors one above, the Normandy in high orbit above a long-dead world.**  
  
He didn't speak to Shepard again until they were through the dust-choked Mu relay and in orbit around what had once been the garden world of Ilos. Shepard peered out of the observation deck window, head pressed against the transparasteel. "In the prothean memories, there's this feeling of how green and lush and beautiful it was," he said, mostly at his reflection.  
  
Kaidan joined him at the window, their shoulders not quite brushing, and looked down at the rusty-hued ball beneath them. Flashes of lightning danced in the churning clouds and the air seemed thick with smoke and dust. "Do you think it was the Reapers?" he asked.  
  
"Yeah, I do." Shepard turned to look at him. "I think we came all this way for nothing."  
  
"I'm not with Cerberus, Shep." Kaidan reached for him, and his hand hung between them before he let it drop. "I swear to you."  
  
"It's awfully coincidental that they hit Hendrix right after you got there." Shepard rocked on his feet then turned to lean his back fully on the window. He regarded Kaidan with a long, serious look. "I know what Anderson said about Wilson, but… I was in his mind before and I didn't..."  
  
"You've been in mine too." Kaidan grabbed Shepard's arms on impulse, and squeezed them tight despite the danger alerts going off in his brain. The vanguard only looked at him. "You've seen inside my memories. My grandparents' farm, what happened to me when I was on Jump Zero—"  
  
"And all I can hear is the sound of the ocean under all of it." Shepard frowned, then shrugged Kaidan's hands off. "I really like you. I really… care about you, and I don't know..."  
  
"I've sent all my reports to my boss at Grissom. There might be a leak there," Kaidan implored, this time taking Shepard's hands in his. "I'll let her know, but... I won't beg forgiveness for something I haven't done. I won't. But I will help you until the very end of this. Job security, right?"  
  
Shepard squeezed Kaidan's hands then leaned forward until their foreheads met. "I believe you," he whispered, pressing a brief kiss to his cheek. "So, let's go."  
  
  
**2.  
The howling waste of history laid bare.**  
  
Vega downshifted the Mako as it bounced over what had once been a city of magnificent proportions.  
  
It had put the massive spires of Feros to shame the moment the Normandy had gone into low, geosynchronous orbit, the gleaming black hands of a time long past reaching far out beyond the clouds. Each building was the size of a city itself, and dropping the Mako had been a logistical nightmare, as it skidded down the side of one building into an ash-choked plaza below.  
  
"I'm amazed it still has atmo, to be honest," Williams said from the front passenger's seat as Vega steered around the sputtering embers of some withered undergrowth.  
  
"Everything that could breathe died off tens of thousands of years ago." Liara shivered, peering up at the towers blotting out the rusty sky. "The hymn of the well of souls talks about the greatest palace on Ilos, about a street of statues older than time leading to it."  
  
"Does that count?" Vega slowed their approach, pointing at an avenue lines with miles of twisted monstrosities.  
  
"Prothean sculpture?" Kaidan breathed, checking the monitors, but Shepard shook his head.  
  
"No. Older. These... these aren't my p— They aren't protheans," he said with a twinge of revulsion.  
  
"We have a signal." Legion's damaged vocoder warbled and they all startled at the sound. The geth had made some good arguments for coming—not having to breathe, and having a highly sensitive suite of platform-boarded sensors chief among them—while Tali and Garrus had remained behind. There was so much Kaidan wanted to ask it, but it had been clear the geth was mainly interested in Tali and Shepard.  
  
He didn't know why that made him vaguely jealous.  
  
"Good job." Shepard patted the geth and its faceplates flexed in something suggesting embarrassment. Kaidan shook his head. Shepard even had that effect on synthetics, apparently.  
  
"I think this is our place," Williams said, struggling to keep her seat as the Mako skidded down a shattered section of the roadway. "Look at it."  
  
They suited up, and stepped out into the choking, dusty air. Kaidan watched his suit's HUD flash a number of warnings about the particulates, and he summoned his barrier to reinforce it. Beside him, the faint liquid shimmer that danced over Liara's and Shepard's suits confirmed they'd thought the same. Williams and Vega could only depend on their hardsuits and tech shields; Kaidan hoped they wouldn't need them once they got in the building.  
  
"There's no entry key." Liara examined the monolithic doorway as Legion and Williams kept watch. "Legion, are you sure it's coming from in here?"  
  
"Affirmative," the geth said, light flickering as it scanned the ruined plaza. "No signs of movement."  
  
"Shepard?" Kaidan said softly, hand on the vanguard's shoulder. "Do you know how to open it?"  
  
"I can hear singing," Shepard said. "I don't know if it's just the memories of this place, but..." He shook his head to clear it. "Yeah. I can open it."  
  
Liara stepped aside and the others gathered around as Shepard held out his hand. The light of his biotics was almost golden in the brownish light, and he brought his hand up to the door. "We were a race of biotics. We sang together in the threads that wove the galaxy together," he half-sang. Thin lines of light danced through the slab and with agonising slowness, the door slowly ground open.  
  
They stepped through, into the colossal foyer, and much faster than it had opened, the door slammed shut behind them, trapping them in darkness.  
  
Vega ran to the door, running panicked hands over it, looking for the seam where it had opened, until there was a distant thunk, a hum, and lights began to flicker on for the first time in fifty thousand years.  
  
The arched ceiling rose up a hundred feet above them, gleaming gold curves and lines. The floor was patterned black and gold and looked as if it stretched out for a mile before them. "It's magnificent." Liara breathed. Kaidan thought she might cry. "I've seen so many ruins, but I've never seen anything so... intact."  
  
As if in response, a voice drifted from invisible speakers, the words garbled, fluting tones, and Kaidan struggled to find a pattern in them, something he might understand, while Liara covered her mouth over her helmet. Vega and Williams ratcheted their weapons and even Legion looked around in surprise.  
  
But Shepard clearly understood. The translucent dragonfly wings of his armour trembled and he drew himself up square. The words he shouted back made no more sense than the others, and the tones fell flat where the building's had been music made liquid and light.  
  
But it got the point across, Kaidan thought, before they all scattered to avoid the barrage of particle beam fire that showered down without warning.  
  
  
**3.  
The Tomb of Science**  
  
Liara threw a barrier up to shield them, and Kaidan joined her, the purple-blue of his biotics meeting the sky-color of hers. From behind that protection, Vega, Williams and Legion searched for a hard target, but the guns were so high up, it was almost impossible to see.  
  
Shepard didn't budge, despite the fact that Kaidan was going hoarse shouting his name. His own shields, a brilliant green-gold, flared up and simply bent the particle beams around him in a massive distortion of gravity. He danced to the side then, as something emerald-bright shot from a side corridor. It was a flickering, human-sized wraith, but as its weapons met Shepard's barrier with a crash of blinding sparks, it was clear it was real enough.  
  
Shepard twisted his biotics into something Kaidan had never seen before, a lash of gem-green, while an omniblade flashed to life on his other arm. It became a dance, Shepard flickering in and out of biotic charges, the thunderclap popping in loud succession behind him as he fought the green ghost that appeared at every turn.  
  
Vega got off a shot, and it passed through, the round pinging off Shepard's shields instead and the marine cursed until they saw Shepard dance away from the ghost, the lash coalescing around his fist.  
  
He brought that armoured fist directly at the wraith, the swing stopping scant millimetres from what passed for the things face, and he shouted something at it in that same lilting language. He switched to English then, neither of them moving.  
  
"Stand down," he roared. "You've been waiting for me."  
  
There was a flicker as the ghost seemingly processed the information, then lowered its weapons and bowed. "You are long overdue, and not what I would have expected," it said, moving as though to dust itself off despite the fact that the motes of ash and sand swirling about the corridor passed right through it. "My lord. I am the last protector of Ilos. The Avatar of Vigilance." It paused, and the gunfire ceased. "You primitives may call me Javik," it added, glancing at the others in the ringing silence.  
  
"You're... you're a VI?" Kaidan asked as they approached cautiously.  
  
"That is insulting, primitive." The ghost flickered with annoyance. It had a vaguely insectile profile and Kaidan saw the immediate resemblance to Shepard's armour. "I am no synthetic, like that abomination behind you. I am a soul print. A... biotic impression of the man I was. The one chosen to stand Vigil in this tomb of my people."  
  
"The Reapers are returning. There's at least one roaming the galaxy right now. I fear it's a vanguard," Shepard said as the grey skin of his helmet peeled back with a queasy slorp. His barrier fluttered, and he took a breath to reassure the others that it was safe, eyes never leaving Javik. "I've come for the Well of Souls. The Crucible."  
  
His tone was so cold that Kaidan shuddered. Liara pushed past him, leaning forward to examine the ghost. "Is everyone here dead?" she asked, peering up then at the faint honeycomb-patterned walls. "The protheans are truly gone?"  
  
"When the Reapers breached our last line of defense, here in this last refuge left by the ones before," Javik said, still looking at Shepard, "there was no hesitation. They would not take us, or the crucible. We sealed ourselves in the towers and died as one. Some were chosen to become Imprints, to remember and share if any still survived and found their way here. We could only stand and watch as the Black Machines burned the air and rent the life from the very earth."  
  
"Vigilance, you answer to me alone. Now. The crucible," Shepard repeated, the wings making a dismissive flick, and Javik inclined its head. Kaidan watched his face, watched his body language, and scowled. It was becoming less human by the moment.  
  
"I do not have that information, but I know where it might be found. It was hidden, to prevent the Reapers from acquiring it." Javik gestured down a side corridor, ancient lights sputtering to life to highlight the way. "It is my pleasure to guide you and your primate entourage, my lord."  
  
"Hey, who you calling a monkey, bugface?" Vega huffed, and Kaidan elbowed him. Shepard's retreating back was straight and square, and there was none of the graceful energy, none of the near-feral power Shepard had shown before.  
  
"Not now. Don't antagonise it," Kaidan whispered. Beside him, Legion nodded.  
  
"Consensus agrees," it chirped. "This entire facility is under the control of Vigilance. If it vents the atmosphere, organics will die. If it releases an EMP, this platform will be destroyed, along with our programs. Shepard-friend is acting outside of observed parameters. We understand that we have not known you very long but..."  
  
"No, Shepard-friend is definitely acting outside of observed parameters, Legion." Kaidan scowled. "Let's go."  
  
  
**4.  
A rest stop in the garden of the dead.**  
  
They stopped to rest in what had once been a conservatory of some sort. The great, transparent dome was cracked but intact, the stormy sky lending a ruddy light to the shrivelled garden.  
  
"There used to be transportation throughout the arcology," Javik explained, striding through a tangle of withered vines. It paused to examine the faint new growth of lichen, then straightened. "I cannot spare the power to run them at this time."  
  
"How much further?" Shepard clasped his hands behind him, the grey bio-armour now fully withdrawn and red highlights playing across the black of his undersuit like blood.  
  
"A few more hours at this pace." Javik bowed with a flicker.  
  
Kaidan broke apart the protein bar he'd stowed in his suit as the others sat. Legion paced the perimeter, its platform not needing the break, while Liara obsessively began photographing every statue and plant she could find.  
  
"You should eat something," he said, offering the gluey mass to Shepard. "I didn't think we were going to need to eat so soon, so I didn't bring enough."  
  
"I'm fine," Shepard said, still watching the storm of ash and dust outside. "I will eat when our mission is completed."  
  
"You're not fine." Kaidan grabbed him by the arm and dragged him towards a gazebo shaded in dead, black tendrils. "You're not acting like yourself." He was relieved Shepard let him—the impulsive gesture would have been for nothing if the vanguard had resisted.  
  
"And what is myself, Kaidan Alenko?" Shepard shoved him against the wall, the pale hue of his eyes lost in a persistent green glow. "You didn't know Shepard before that tomb at Hendrix. You don't know what he did or what he was. I am a thing to study, to put on a pedestal. The Biotic Hero. The Freak. The Murderer."  
  
The protein bar slipped from Kaidan's hand into the dust, and he grabbed Shepard, throwing the full force of his biotics into it and slammed them both to the floor. "You are not a prothean, Shepard. You're human," Kaidan snarled, watching the glow in Shepard's eyes flicker. He tightened his grip on the vanguard's wrists. "I was half in love with you before I'd even met you. And then I met you, and nothing has been the same since. You're not like anyone I've ever met, but you are human. You are weird and beautiful and kind and impulsive. You're not... this."  
  
"I just want to go home," Shepard whispered, his eyes that clear, glacial blue-green again, "and I don't even know where that is."  
  
"We'll find it together, I promise." Kaidan bent, unsure of what he was really doing until Shepard arched up to meet him, mouth soft against Kaidan's. "What… what were you reading, before they took your omnitool away?"  
  
Shepard laughed, the flush on his face obvious even in the dim, rusted light. "It was a romance novel. The hero was a spacer pirate who'd just rescued the love of his life."  
  
Kaidan let Shepard go, twining his fingers with his instead. "That's kind of a high bar."  
  
"Don't let me go, Doc," Shepard whispered into the next round of kisses. "Please don't let me go again."  
  
"Never," Kaidan murmured. A breeze from the air recyclers ghosted over them, and the rustle of dead leaves sounded like waves.  
  
**5.  
Suffocating Deja Vu**  
  
The chamber was not what he'd expected, and Kaidan frowned as they entered.  
  
Because it was exactly what he should have come to expect. Massive and black, even with the glow of the lights coming back online. In the middle of it, standing a hundred feet tall, was a miniature mass relay on a platform.  
  
But standing before it was a sphere in a long-dried pool. Kaidan swore he could still hear the trickle of water. 'Leviathan.' He rolled the word over in his mind. Thought about Kaylee's office decor, and Anderson's apartment.  
  
About the fountain on Hendrix.  
  
"Liara." Kaidan pulled her aside as they made their way down the stairs. "You said you excavated on Elysium, under the spaceport."  
  
"The ruins that Shepard first contacted, yes." She nodded absently, using her omnitool's drone to take more pictures.  
  
"Was there something like this there?" He jerked a thumb at the faintly opalescent sphere and she nodded.  
  
"Well, it was shattered beyond hope, but we found fragments of it. We've found others at other prothean dig sites. We've always believed they were a common aesthetic element, or perhaps a symbolic religious object. Oh. I should ask Javik!" she said brightly. "I'll do that now."  
  
"Yeah." Kaidan watched her go. Ahead, Shepard was still subdued, but, even involved in some animated conversation in a dead language with Javik, he seemed more himself.  
  
"Hopefully this is it," Vega said as he helped Kaidan, then Williams down a crumbling ramp. "I know we all got our parts to play, but this place gives me the creeps."  
  
"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Kaidan asked, rubbing his head. The gummy taste of the bar lingered in the back of his throat, strangely salty. "Kaylee always said that to me too. Our part to play in what?"  
  
"We all have our parts to play, man, it's just that." Vega shrugged. "You're gettin' cranky, Doc."  
  
"These spheres, Javik—what do they mean to your people, I've wondered so long," Liara bubbled at the ghost.  
  
"They were here before us. And before those who came before," the prothean said as it stepped into the pool. "A beacon from the past. The plans for the crucible have been handed down over the aeons, cycles of life and destruction. We... did not create it. The ancient ones did. We merely were to execute their will when the cycle of destruction began again."  
  
Shepard reached out and touched the sphere. An opal fire flickered in its glassy depths and the air lit with star charts and plans. "The well of souls."  
  
"A weapon of the ancients. Built in stages over millions of years, while the Reapers harvest us like so much fruit." Javik looked off into the distance of a faraway memory. "They claimed they were here to save us. To uplift us. But they brought only death, and we fought them world by world, as you will. We had our parts to play."  
  
"Not if we can stop them before the cycle even starts," Shepard said. "We need to get these coordinates to Traynor. Find this..." He moved his hand and the images shifted. "This great ocean."  
  
"What parts to play?" Kaidan interrupted, stalking over to Javik. "Play in what?"  
  
The ghost looked affronted. "The war between the Ancients and the Black Machines they built," Javik said. "When it is over, a new golden age will begin again."  
  
"There are texts on Thessia that say the same thing." Liara nodded. "And I've heard from other experts that there are partially decoded Innusannon texts that have a similar theme, a golden age rising out of the death of darkness."  
  
"We can't go to this ocean world." Kaidan felt a rising tide of panic that matched the sound of rushing water in his ears. "Something's not right, something hasn't been right since this all started. We can't do this, not yet. We're not pawns... we're..."  
  
"You had one part, Doc." Williams tilted her head, dark eyes oddly blank.  
  
"You just had to keep Shepard happy," Vega said.  
  
"They've been waiting for someone like him, the final component of the Well of Souls," Liara added brightly.  
  
Kaidan jogged past them to Shepard and grabbed his arm. "Shepard, listen to me. We have to get out of here. Something isn't right."  
  
"But. The coordinates?" Shepard said, then his eyes darkened. "Or is this part of your Cerberus plot?"  
  
"No, we already discussed that! I'm not with—" Kaidan's words died as the others gathered round. Even Legion's light sputtered oddly. "No."  
  
"You're a traitor, Doc," Williams said. "Cerberus wants to give us up to the Black Machines. To give us up to the Reapers."  
  
"You don't want to help save us all. The crucible will do that," Liara added. "Don't you want to be good?"  
  
"No!" Kaidan pressed his hands against his temples, armour plates digging painfully in to the skin. "No, I don't work for Cerberus." Their voices were blurring into white noise, crashing waves in his hearing. He scrunched his eyes shut until all he saw were sparks in the black. "We all have our parts to play, we all have..." The words were no comfort, and he felt a sick twist of deja vu. This was wrong. This was wrong and it had happened all before. "No. This didn't happen like this."  
  
  
**6.  
The Mirror Shatters.**  
  
When he opened his eyes again, the scene was frozen, silent. All of them, even Shepard, looking at him, caught in mid-motion.  
  
"What..." Kaidan stepped back, breath coming in shallow gulps. "What the hell is going on?"  
  
"I am very disappointed in you, Kaidan." Kaylee said, and Kaidan wheeled around to face her. She stood in a vast empty space, a still pool in the darkness. The oceanic light gave a greenish cast to her fine blond hair and her face was grim. "We waited and searched for so long for someone like Shepard. Someone who could fulfil the last need of the crucible."  
  
"A champion." Captain Anderson stepped out of the shadows, shaking his head sadly. "So much careful planning over the aeons. Ascension was an especially good investment. Asari were useful, but you humans are so much more adaptable. And you especially. So talented. Dedicated. We knew you'd protect the champion with your life once you met him."  
  
Kaidan tried to step away, but his body wouldn't respond. He couldn't speak, couldn't blink as Kaylee cupped his face in her small hands. "You all had your parts to play for us. We've been hiding here for so long from our own creations. It's embarrassing. And you had to be the spanner in the works, so to speak."  
  
"I entered the relay." Kaidan forced the words to form, a twitch of a smile trembling at the corners of his mouth. "And I destroyed it on this end. On Despoina's end. To keep them from following. Your golden age means we're all your pawns."  
  
"You would have flourished under our care." Anderson shrugged, stepping through the water. "Now, everyone you hold dear will be ground up into so much fodder for the Reapers."  
  
  
**EPILOGUE: SIGURD'S CRADLE/PSI TOPHET/  
  
Somewhere. Somewhen later. Two miles deep and counting in the crushing blue of a half-forgotten world called 2181 Despoina.**  
  
"My part to play was protecting Shepard." Kaidan willed the grin onto his face. "I'd say, I did that splendidly."  
  
"You did." Shepard said, stepping between the constructs of Anderson and Kaylee. "Was it real, what you said about me? About us? Was any of it?"  
  
Kaidan looked at him, black undersuit gleaming wetly and his hair incandescent in the gloom. His eyes were bright with that green flash and there was a sad smile on his lips. One hand, ungloved, caressed Kaidan's jaw, and his eyes finally closed.  
  
"I don't know," Kaidan said, heart like lead at that warm touch. Everything else was so cold. He felt like he was drowning. "It felt real. It felt so real to me. But I don't know if it was. I want it to be, though."  
  
"Then it's real enough for me, Doc." Shepard smiled. "I'm coming for you."  
  
"What?" Kaidan blinked.  
  
"I told you, I had your scent and I could find you anywhere, didn't I?" His smile broadened, a vanguard's feral show of teeth. "I'm coming for you, and the crucible and then we're going to stop this nonsense once and for all."  
  
"Shepard," Kaidan whispered as the vanguard backed away, turning into the gloom. "I'll be waiting. And when you come, let's finish that book you were reading."  
  
"Count on it." Shepard said, and all Kaidan saw was a blinding flash of green.  
  
  
  
**END**


End file.
